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AITHOR: 


GRIFFIN,  EDWARD 
HERRICK 


TITLE: 


THREE  STUDIES  IN 

CURRENT... 

PL  A  CE : 

BALTIMORE 

DA  TE : 

1914 


Master  Negalive  # 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 


lk^£^^tLL 


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Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


Philosophy 

D109.3 

G87 


Griffin,  Edv/ard  Herrick,  1843-1929. 

Threo  studies  in  current  philosophical  questions 
^Goino  present-day  problems  of  philosophy,  by  E.H. 
Griffin ;  Imaf^os  and  ideas,  by  K.  Dunlin;  On  the 
existence  of  ideas,  by  A.O,  Lovejoy^.   Baltimore, 
The  Johns  Hopkins  press,  1914* 

99  p«   2^  cm.   (On  cover:  The  Johns  Hopkins 
university  circular,  1914,  no«3,  whole  no. 263) 


Restrictions  on  Use: 


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TECHNICAL  MICROFORKf  DATA 


FILM     SIZE: yL'^irOl^, REDUCTION     RATIO: 

IMAGE  PLACEMENT:    lA    s^    IB     IIB 

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RLMED  BY:    RESEARCH  PUBLICATIONS,  INC  VVOODBRIDGE.  CT  ' 


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c 


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1 1 00  Wayne  Avenue,  Suite  1 1 00 
Silver  Spring,  Maryland  20910 

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MflNUFflCTURED   TO   flllM   STflNDflROS 
BY  fiPPLIED   IMAGE,    INC. 


1914 


No.  3 


\    1 


THE 


JOHNS  HOPKINS 
UNIVERSITY  CIRCULAR 


THREE  STUDIES  IN 


CURRENT  PHILOSOPHICAL  QUESTIONS 


Baltimore,  Mabyi.and 

Published  by  Tr-;  Univebsity 

IssxED  Monthly  moM  v.   tobeb  to  July 

AIabch,   1914 


[New  Series,  1914,  No.  3] 
[Whole  iS umber,  263] 


•4\ 
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Enttred.  October  21,  1908,  at  Baltimore,  itd.,  as  »«<  o:  <  class  ui.      r,  under 

^ct  9f  Congress  of  Jnly  16, 1894 


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THREE  STUDIES  IN 


CURRENT    PHILOSOPHICAL 


QUESTIONS 


>  ^-^-    ,, 


BALTIMOBE 

The  Johns  Hopkins  Press 

]914 


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THE 


JOHNS  HOPKINS 
UNIVERSITY     CIRCULAR 


JOHNS  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY  CIRCULAR,  No.  263 


MARCH.     1914 


CONTENTS 

Some    Present-Day    Problems   of    Philosophy.     By 


PAGE 


E.  H.  Griffin    . 


Images  and  Ideas.     By  K.  Dunlap     . 


« 


.     25 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas.     By  A.  O.  Lovejoy      .     42 


Y ,  ,  Xl^     U-* 


3 


\t)!)-3 


New  Series,  1914,  No.  3 


MARCH,  1914 


Whole  Number,  263 


The  Department  of  Philosophy  having  been  invited  to  be  re- 
sponsible for  the  contents  of  this  issue  of  the  University  Circular, 
it  has  seemed  that  the  opportunity  might  perhaps  best  be  utilized 
by  the  publication  of  two  or  three  brief  studies  illustrative  of 
certain  of  the  questions  in  theoretical  philosophy  which  have  of 
late  especially  engaged  the  attention  of  members  of  the  Depart- 
ment. Part  of  the  first  paper,  and  the  second  and  third,  deal, 
from  the  points  of  view  of  their  respective  authors,  with  phases 
of  a  single  issue  which  has  been  especially  prominent  in  re- 
cent philosophical  discussion  in  England  and  America.  The 
two  last-mentioned  papers  present,  in  simplified  form,  part  of  the 
material  of  a  course  on  *  *  The  Conception  of  Consciousness  in  the 
Light  of  Recent  Theories"  given  by  the  writers  in  collaboration 
during  the  current  year.  The  first  paper  was  originally  deliv- 
ered before  the  Huxley  Society  of  the  University. 


139] 


Present-Day  Problems 


[140 


141] 


Edward  H,  Griffin 


SOME  PRESENT-DAY  PROBLEMS  OF 

PHILOSOPHY 

By  Edward  H.  Griffin 

Professor  of   the  History   of  Philosophy   and  Dean   of   the 

College  Faculty 


Let  US  imagine  the  case  of  a  person  of  good  understanding, 
not  trained  in  the  technicalities  of  philosophy,  knowing  noth- 
ing of  schools  and  systems,  whose  interest  in  these  subjects 
has  in  some  way  been  aroused  and  who  wishes  to  reach  a 
satisfactory  view  of  himself  and  his  relation  to  the  world 
from  the  standpoint  of  philosophy.  The  attention  of  such  a 
person  would  of  course  be  attracted  by  certain  familiar  terms 
—idealism,  realism,  absolutism,  pragmatism,  pluralism.  He 
asks  himself,  *' What  do  these  mean?  What  truth  is  in 
them?  Does  any  one  of  these  commend  itself  to  me  as  valid 
and  reasonably  adequate?  Or,  can  I  borrow  elements  from 
several,  or  from  each  of  them,  and  reach  a  composite  or  eclec- 
tic result?  ''  It  is  easy  to  imagine  an  intelligent  and  thought- 
ful person  undertaking  such  an  inquiry;  no  doubt  many 
persons  have  done,  and  are  doing  it. 

I.  Terhaps  the  word  realism  would  be  as  attractive  to 
him  as  any  of  these  terms.  *"  Eeality — that  is  what  I  am 
after,  that  is  what  I  want  to  get.     What  is  realism  ?  '*' 

Our  inquirer  discovers,  very  readily,  that  realism  is  in- 
tended to  signify  the  existence  of  the  objects  of  our  experi- 
ence independently  of  our  knowledge  of  them.  That  doubt- 
less would  seem  to  him  reasonable.  "  Of  course,"  he  says, 
''objects  exist  independently  of  my  knowledge.  That  chair 
is  in  this  room,  whether  I  know  it  or  not.  It  was  in  the 
room  before  I  entered,  and  will  be  in  it  after  I  go  out.'' 
Nothing  would  seem  to  be  more  plain  than  that  the  existence 
of  objects  is  not  constituted  by,  or  dependent  upon,  anyone's 


/3 

'4 


knowing  them.  The  human  race  has  inhabited  this  earth  a 
comparatively  short  time,  but  for  unnumbered  ages  before  the 
advent  of  man  the  earth  existed  and  passed  through  its  geo- 
logic changes,  though  there  was  no  one  to  be  aware  of  them. 

Yet,  evident  as  this  is,  a  moment's  reflection  shows  our 
inquiring  friend  that  the  matter  is  not  quite  so  simple  as,  at 
first  thought,  it  seems.  The  chair,  as  I  perceive  it,  is  a  com- 
plex of  qualities,  each  of  which  is  apprehended  through  one 
of  my  senses.  It  has  a  certain  size  and  shape,  and  hardness 
and  smoothness,  and  color,  and  odor,  and  temperature,  and 
weight,  and  sound  (if  I  should  strike  it),  etc.  Some  if  not 
all  of  these  qualities  evidently  imply  the  presence  of  an  ob- 
server. How  can  there  be  color  if  there  is  no  one  to  see  it; 
or  sound  if  there  is  no  one  to  hear  it;  or  odor  if  there  is  no 
one  to  smell  it;  or  roughness  and  smoothness  if  there  is  no 
one  to  touch  it;  or  heat  and  cold  if  there  is  no  one  capable 
of  these  sensations?  Even  in  the  case  of  those  qualities 
which  seem  to  belong  to  the  very  nature  of  a  material  body, 
such  as  extension  and  impenetrability,  these  vary  with  the 
perceiver.  An  insect  must  get  a  very  different  idea  of  size 
and  shape  and  hardness  and  motion  from  that  of  a  man. 
All  qualities — those  that  are  invariably  present  as  truly  as 
those  that  may,  or  may  not,  be  present — are  forms  of  our 
consciousness,  subjective  states,  determinations  contributed  by 
our  minds.  The  first  hasty  conclusion  must  therefore  be 
modified.  Not  the  qualities  as  we  perceive  them,  exist  inde- 
pendently of  our  knowledge,  but  causes  capable  of  producing 
the  qualities.  The  vibrations  of  the  atmosphere,  the  waves 
of  ether,  exist  objectively,  and  are  so  related  to  our  physical 
and  psychical  organism  as  to  produce  in  us  sensations  of 
sound  and  of  color.  A  world  of  physical  energies  exists,  in- 
dependently of  us,  and  we  are  so  constituted  as  to  be  capable 
of  interpreting  these  energies  in  the  form  of  the  various  sense 
qualities. 

The  objection  may  suggest  itself  that  this  is  assuming  a 
causal  relation  between  things  essentially  unlike.     Physical 


6 


Present-Day  Problems 


[142 


143] 


Edward  II.  Griffin 


energies  and  conscious  states  are  very  different;  how  can  one 
be  the  cause  of  the  other?  But  decisive  weight  can  hardly 
be  allowed  to  this  objection  when  due  consideration  is  given 
to  the  disparity  between  causes  and  effects  which  we  con- 
stantly observe.  Friction  produces  sound,  and  heat,  and 
flame,  and  color.  Electrical  causes  produce  physiological 
effects.  Threatening  clouds,  or  violent  winds,  inspire  fear. 
We  cannot  say  that  the  non-conscious  is  incapable  of  acting 
causally  upon  the  conscious.  There  is  nothing  irrational,  or 
contrary  to  experience,  in  affirming  that  "matter"  conceived 
dynamically,  as  the  physicist  conceives  it,  is  directly  effective 
in  producing  psychical  states. 

Our  intelligent  inquirer  would  doubtless  take  note  of  the 
fact  that  the  conscious  states,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  phy- 
sical energies,  on  the  other,  are,  respectively,  interrelated. 
States  of  consciousness  are  not  isolated  one  from  another,  but 
are  connected  by  ties  of  association  and  memory;  they  form 
a  continuum,  a  coherent  whole.  The  occurrences  of  the 
physical  world  also  stand  to  each  other  in  definite  relations  of 
interdependence,  which  make  it  possible  to  foresee  and  to  ac- 
count for  them.  It  would  seem  reasonable,  therefore,  to  as- 
sume some  substantive  principle  of  unity  and  permanence,  in 
each  case.  The  psychical  processes  and  the  physical  processes 
would  seem  alike  to  point  to  some  kind  of  being  underlying 
them.  The  terms  "  mind  ''  and  "  matter  "  serve  to  designate 
these  contrasted  forms  of  being.  Realism  therefore  means 
that  a  conscious  reality,  mind,  or  self,  has  over  against  it  a 
non-conscious  reality — a  world  of  material  objects — which  it 
is  capable  of  knowing,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  but  which 
exists  independently  of  this  knowledge. 

Our  unsophisticated  inquirer  would  soon  discover  that  this 
result,  satisfactory  as  it  seems,  is  not  exempt  from  criticism. 
Because  it  recognizes  two  realities — mind  and  matter,  ideas 
and  things — it  is  described  as  dualism ;  and  only  a  very  slight 
acquaintance  with  philosophical  literature  is  necessary  to 
make  it  clear  that  this  is  a  tenn  of  ill  repute.     The  dualism 


> 


between  mind  and  body,  bequeathed  by  Descartes  as  an  un- 
solved problem;  the  dualism  between  thought  and  things, 
which  as  formulated  by  Locke  furnished  the  occasion  for 
the  immaterialism  of  Berkeley;  these  are  held  to  be  serious, 
if  not  fatal,  difficulties  inherent  in  any  and  every  form  of 
dualistic  theory.  It  is  considered  necessary  to  get  rid  of  the 
superficial  and  misleading  conception  of  the  world  as  divided 
into  the  material  and  the  spiritual,  and  to  think  of  it  as  of 
one  kind.     How  this  is  to  be  done,  is  the  problem. 

Our  would-be  philosopher  would  probably  suspect  that  there 
is  only  one  way — through  the  elimination  of  one  or  the  other 
of  the  two  terms — but  not  being  prepared  to  discard  either 
mind  or  matter,  he  would  be  ready  to  listen  attentively  to 
any  suggestion  that  might  seem  to  offer  relief  from  an  alter- 
native so  unwelcome.  Having  given  in  his  adhesion,  provi- 
sionally at  least,  to  realism,  he  would  naturally  be  attracted 
by  the  current  doctrine  known  as  the  "  new  realism."  "  Here," 
he  might  say  to  himself,  "  is  very  likely  to  be  found  the  thing 
which  I  am  in  search  of — a  modern  version  of  the  common 
sense  belief  in  a  world  of  independently  existing  material 
objects,  so  stated  as  to  avoid  the  criticisms  which  are  thought 
to  weigh  so  heavily  against  the  old-fashioned  formulation  of 
that  opinion."  If  we  may  imagine  him,  in  his  desire  for 
first-hand  information,  to  undertake  the  perusal  of  the  vol- 
ume published  under  the  title  "  The  New  Realism,"  he  would 
come  upon  many  passages  which  would  be  likely  to  occasion 
him  perplexity.  Here,  for  example:  "Realism  holds ^  that 
things  known  may  continue  to  exist  unaltered  when  they 
are  not  known,  or  that  things  may  pass  in  and  out  of  the 
cognitive  relation  without  prejudice  to  their  reality,  ox  that 
the  existence  of  a  thing  is  not  correlated  with  or  dependent 
upon  the  fact  that  anybody  experiences  it,  perceives  it,  con- 
ceives it,  or  is  in  any  way  aware  of  it."  "  Is  not  correlated 
with,  or  dependent  upon  the  fact  that  anybody  is  aware  of  it." 
But  the  chair  cannot  exist,  as  such,  apart  from  a  perceiving 

^The  New  Realism,  p.  474   (Montague). 


8 


Present-Day  Problems 


[144 


mind.     It  possesses  certain  qualities,  and  is  intended  for  cer- 
tain uses,  which  presuppose  intelligence.     If  there  is  no  being 
in  the  universe  who  can  experience  these  qualities,  or  form 
any  idea  of  these  uses,  how  can  it  exist  as  a  chair?     The 
assertion  must  be  meant  to  apply  only  to  the  moment  of  per- 
ception.    In  the  intervals  of  perception,  the  various  elements 
and  forces  must  continue  to  exist,  as  we  all  suppose  them  to 
do,  in  a  purely  physical  way,  capable  of  being  recognized  as 
a  chair,  but  not  discerned  as  such.     The  meaning  must  be 
that   when   these   objective   physical   data   are   construed   in 
consciousness  as  a  chair  no  new  form  of  being  is  introduced; 
there   is  no  entrance  upon   the   scene  of  an  extra-physical 
agency  which  we  may  call  "  mind,"  possessing  certain  powers 
by  virtue  of  which  it  interprets  these  physical  data  in  terms 
of  sense-feeling,  and  sets  them  in  intellectual  relations  of 
space  and  time  and  number  and  causality  and  the  like,  form- 
ing an  "  idea  "  of  the  object  which  stands  over  against  it, 
as  its  psychical  representative  or  equivalent,  so  that  we  have 
two  forms  or  orders  of  being,  matter  and  mind,  the  object 
known  and  the  subject  knowing.    "According  to  this  view,  in- 
stead of  there  being  a  fundamental  dual  division  of  the  world 
into  ideas  and  things,  there  is  only  the  class  of  things :  ideas 
being  the  sub-class  of  those  things  which  happen  to  be  known. 
That  which  is  commonly  called  the  'object'  of  knowledge 
merges  with  the  idea."  -     In  the  moment  of  perception,  then, 
the  object  and  the  idea  are  one  and  the  same.     Physical  ele- 
ments when  reacted  to  by  the  central  nervous  system — the 
brain  and  the  sense  organs — become  mental  content.     It  is 
a  physical  transaction  entirely.     The  object  is  the  idea;  the 
idea  is  the  object.     "  Ideas  are  only  things  in  a  certain  rela- 
tion ;  things,  in  respect  of  being  known  are  ideas."    (It  should 
be  observed  that  this  is  termed  a  doctrine  of  "  epistemological 
monism":  it  is  a  theory  about  knowledge,  and  not  about 
being   or   existence.     One   may  hold   any   metaphysics   one 
pleases,  but  it  is  argued  that  knowledge  may  be  accounted 


*  Perry,  Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  p.  126. 


145] 


Edward  H.  Griffin 


9 


for  without  the  assumption  of  any  form  of  being  except  that 
which  we  commonly  designate  as  material). 

Obviously,  the  essential  point  here  is  the  view  taken  of  the 
nature  and  function  of  consciousness.  It  is  denied  that  con- 
sciousness contributes  anything.  "  Consciousness  " — to  use 
a  phrase  of  the  late  Professor  James — '"  does  not  denote  a 
special  stuif  or  way  of  being."  "  There  is,  I  believe,  no 
aboriginal  stuff  or  quality  of  being,  contrasted  with  that  of 
which  material  objects  are  made,  out  of  which  our  thoughts 
of  them  are  made."  ^  Consciousness  is  variously  described  as 
**'  a  species  of  function  exercised  by  an  organism  " ;  "  a  certain, 
context  or  grouping  of  objects " ;  "a  type  of  behavior " — 
not  something  to  be  inferred  from  behavior,  but  the  behavior 
itself.  A  favorite  characterisation  is  in  the  use  of  the  word 
"  relation."  Consciousness  is  conceived  as  a  relation  between 
tilings  which  makes  a  synthesis  of  meaning  possible.  When 
physical  objects — as  the  chair — and  my  central  nervous  sys- 
tem are  brought  together,  a  new  relation  arises,  or  may  arise 
— that  of  being  known,  the  relation  of  "  meaning,"  of 
"  awareness,"  of  "  consciousness."  This  is  strictly  a  property 
of  the  physical  organism.  It  is  a  reaction  of  the  highly 
organized  and  highly  specialized  brain  structures  to  a  mate- 
rial excitation  or  stimulus.  Mind  is  not  a  substance,  or 
entity,  as  it  was  to  Descartes  and  Locke;  it  is  not  even  a 
series  of  states,  as  it  was  to  Hume;  it  is  a  property  or  func- 
tion of  the  brain  which  manifests  itself  under  certain  con- 
ditions, so  that  we  may  more  properly  say  that  consciousness 
inheres  in  its  objects  than  that  its  objects  inhere  in  it.  As 
Professor  Montague  explains :  "  The  idealist  cuts  out  the  self - 
subsi stent  world  of  material  bodies  in  space  and  leaves  only 
the  spaceless  realm  of  minds  and  their  ideas  and  states.  The 
monistic  realist  retains  that  world,  and  leaves  out  the 
'  minds '  or  '  ideas.'  He  is  monistic  in  his  epistemology  be- 
cause he  believes  in  only  one  system  of  realities,  the  realities 
in  space  and  time;  he  is  realistic  because  he  believes  that 


^Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  I,  477. 


10 


Present-Day  Problems 


lue 


no  object  forfeits  its  objective  or  self-existent  character  by 
chancing  to  stand  in  the  conscious  relation.  .  .  .  Conscious- 
ness is  a  relation  existing  in  a  material  nature  along  with 
other  relations,  and,  like  them,  describable  ultimately  in 
terms  of  the  basic  relations  of  time  and  space."  * 

Xow,  would  an  ordinary  sensible  man,  devoid  of  prepos- 
sessions of  any  kind,  be  likely  to  assent  to  this  statement  of 
the  case?  Let  us  pay  him  the  compliment  of  supposing  him 
superior  to  any  of  the  prejudices  which  might  be  excited  by 
such  a  word  as  "  materialistic."  We  will  suppose  him  duly 
aware  of  the  fact  that  epithets  are  not  arguments,  and  we 
will  suppose  him  also  to  realize  that,  as  we  do  not  know 
what  "  matter  "  is,  in  its  ultimate  reality,  it  is  not  worth 
while  to  be  too  dogmatic  about  names.  He  simply  takes  the 
facts  and  asks,  what  do  they  seem  to  signify?  If  conscious- 
ness be,  as  Professor  Montague  tells  us,  "  a  relation  existing 
in  a  material  nature  along  with  other  relations,"  it  must  be 
admitted  to  be  unique  in  this  respect,  that  it  is  only  through 
it  that  the  other  relations  are  known.  The  various  objects 
and  persons  in  this  room  make  up  an  aggregate  of  physical 
relations  existing,  apart  from  my  knowledge,  in  rerum  na- 
tura;  when  under  the  appropriate  conditions,  the  relation  of 
consciousness  is  introduced,  all  these  objects  and  persons  be- 
came known.  Is  that  which  discloses  the  objects  on  a  parity 
with,  and  of  the  same  kind  as,  the  objects  disclosed?  The 
light  which  reveals  objects  is  not  itself  one  of  the  objects 
which  it  reveals.  Consciousness,  we  are  told  by  Professor 
Woodbridge,  is  meaning;  ''A  world  without  consciousness  is 
a  world  without  meaning.  Add  consciousness,  and  then 
meaning  is  added  and  nothing  else."  ^  But  is  not  that 
enough?  A  world  of  material  forms  and  forces  signifying 
nothing:  all  this  transfigured  and  seen  to  be  instinct  with 


*  *'  Contemporary  Realism  and  the  Problems  of  Perception,"  Jour- 
nal of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods,  iv,  374. 

'  Woodbridge,  '*  The  Problem  of  Consciousness,"  in  the  volume 
commemorative  of  Professor  Garman. 


147] 


Edward  II.  Griffin 


11 


order  and  harmony  and  beauty.  Is  this  transformation  so 
slight  a  thing  that  that  through  which  it  is  accomplished 
may  be  properly  classified  as  one  of  the  physical  existences 
w^hose  significance  it  discerns?  It  is  said  that  consciousness 
is  not  constitutive  of  objects.  But  if  it  give  objects  all  their 
meaning,  is  it  not  constitutive? 

In  the  article  just  referred  to.  Professor  Woodbridge  urges 
that  the  conception  of  mind  as  ^^  an  end  term  " :  i.  e.,  an 
ultimate  form  of  reality,  the  source  of  relations,  rather  than 
itself  a  relation,  is  inconsistent  with  the  view  of  the  world 
as  the  product  of  evolution.  "  The  sense  of  a  vast  and  un- 
folding nature,  which  science  deepens  within  us,  puts  under 
suspicion  those  philosophies  which  seek  to  explain  the  world 
primarily  from  the  initial  fact  that  man  happens  to  be  con- 
scious of  a  small  part  of  it."  Is  not  this  a  mechanistic  and 
Spencerian  view?  Are  we  obliged  to  exclude  the  possibility 
of  the  appearance  of  anything  new,  i.  e.,  not  explainable  in 
terms  of  what  has  preceded,  in  the  cosmical  process?  If, 
at  last,  whether  it  be  derivable  from  what  has  preceded  or 
not,  a  being,  or  an  agent,  or  a  relation — whatever  it  be — 
appears,  possessing  the  power  of  intelligently  apprehending 
what  has  gone  forward  during  the  long  travail  of  time,  look- 
ing back  upon  it,  in  scientific  interpretation,  forecasting  it 
in  astronomic  computation,  or  in  the  verified  hypotheses  of 
induction,  giving  it  the  meaning  which  hitherto  it  has  not 
had,  is  it  not  better  to  interpret  the  world  from  the  point 
of  view  of  this  superior,  this  transcendent,  product,  using 
its  norms  and  analogies,  rather  than  to  remain  upon  the  lower 
plane,  using  the  norms  and  analogies  of  what  we  call  matter  ? 

It  is  difficult  to  expound  this  view  of  consciousness,  as  a 
relation  subsisting  between  physical  elements,  without  using 
language  inconsistent  with  it.  Man  is  more  and  more  assert- 
ing his  mastery  over  nature.  The  mind  not  only  apprehends 
the  facts  and  laws  of  the  world  in  which  it  is  placed,  but  it 
uses  these  facts  and  laws  for  the  attainment  of  its  ends; 
it  manifests  initiative  as  well  as  understanding;  emotions, 


12 


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ideals,  aspirations,  convictions,  self-sacrifices — all  these  ele- 
ments and  manifestations  of  what,  for  want  of  a  better  word, 
we  call  personality,  go  to  make  up  the  content  of  experience 
and   demand  explanation.     "Is  there  such   a   thing,''   asks 
Professor  Perry,  ''as  moral  causality?     Are  there  cases  of 
determination  by  moral  as  well  as  by  mechanical  law?"  ^    In 
answering  this  question  in  the  atfirmative,  declaring  unam- 
biguously that  "  there  is  surficient  ground,  in  reason  and  m 
fact,   for  asserting   that  interests  operate,  that  things  take 
place  because  of  the  good  they  promote;  this  is  the  meaning 
of  freedom,  both  as  an  actuality  and  as  a  prerogative.     I  can 
and  do,  within  limits,  act  a^s  I  will;  action  is  in  a  measure 
governed  by  desires  and  intentions ''—in  saying  this,  going 
beyond  the  sphere  of  perception,  where  the  theory  may  be 
applied  with  less  difficulty,  into  that  of  moral  feeling  and 
moral  action,  expanding  the  theory  into  a  Philosophy  of  Life, 
the  advocate  of  the  new  realism  seems  to  involve  himself  in 
contradiction.     How   can   a    relation    between   physical   ele- 
ments, that  which  is  a  mere  response  to  material  environment, 
exercise   these   preferential,    self-determining   powers,   elect 
between  alternatives,  exalt  itself  above  that  out  of  which  it 
has  arisen  and  to  which  it  pertains? 

I  will  not  follow  our  imaginary  inquirer  into  the  details 
of  the  investigations  which  he  may  be  supposed  further  to 
pursue.  The  point  so  cogently  urged  by  Professor  Lovejoy, 
that  dreams,  illusions,  hallucinations,  have  just  as  definite  a 
content,  while  they  last,  as  real  perceptions  have,  though  there 
is  no  actual  object  present,— the  psychical  state  being  inde- 
pendent of  the  object  which  the  relational  theory  requires 

this,  and  the  further  fact  that  this  difficulty  is  not  confined 
to  illusions  alone,  that  it  arises  whenever  we  interpret  data 
that  are  doubtful :  these  and  other  difficulties  and  objections 
may  be  left  unconsidered. 

The  point  is:    Is  this  account  of  consciousness  consistent 
with  the  facts?    Are  the  objections  to  the  belief  of  common 


^Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  p.  341. 


149] 


Edward  II.  Grijfiii 


13 


sense,  that  there  is  a  fundamental  duality  in  our  experience, 
so  grave  that  we  do  well  to  exchange  them  for  the  difficulties 
inherent  in  this  view?  It  is  just  as  important  to  distinguish 
things  which  differ  as  it  is  to  bring  together  things  that  are 
alike.  Monism  does  away  with  some  perplexing  problems, 
but  it  may  substitute  for  them  others  which  are  worse.  The 
good  sense  of  the  world  has  declined  to  accept  monism  in 
the  Berkeleian  form :  it  may  be  that  it  will  not  be  satisfied 
with  the  antithesis  to  Berkeley  presented  by  the  new  realists. 
II.  If  we  may  suppose  our  inquirer  to  have  made  up  his 
mind  to  accept  what  seems  to  be  the  testimony  of  conscious- 
ness to  the  existence  of  a  w^orld  of  real  objects  existing 
independently  of  our  knowledge — correcting  indeed,  the 
realism  of  naive  common  sense  by  distinguishing  between  the 
sense  data  which  exist  extra-mentally,  and  the  interpretation 
which  we  put  upon  them — i.  e.,  the  percept  which  is  a  con- 
struction of  our  minds, — and,  also,  declining  to  be  persuaded 
by  the  new  realists  to  explain  away  the  function  of  mind  in 
order  to  establish  "  epistemological  monism," — we  may  imag- 
ine his  attention  to  be  next  directed  to  the  questions  which 
have  been  so  much  discussed  during  the  past  few  years,  under 
the  name  "  pragmatism."  This,  like  "  realism,"  as  an  at- 
tractive word,  being  akin  to  "practice"  and  "practical,"  and 
suggesting,  as  means  to  the  determination  of  truth,  the  appeal 
to  experience.  The  points  at  issue  have  become  so  familiar 
even  to  the  reader  of  periodical  literature,  that  it  is  not  un- 
likely that  our  friend  would  be  slightly  weary  of  the  sub- 
ject, perhaps  inclined  to  dispose  of  it  summarily.  He  would 
doubtless  distinguish  the  two  senses  in  which  pragmatism 
may  be  understood:  (a)  as  a  theory  in  regard  to  the  nature 
of  truth,  and  (&)  as  a  statement  of  the  criterion  which  may 
be  employed  in  order  to  determine  what  is  truth.  Prag- 
matism assumes  the  facts  of  sense  perception  and  of  self- 
consciousness — the  materials  which  are  given  us  as  objects  of 
immediate  knowledge.  These  are  not  properly  characterized 
as  true  or  false.     Truth  and  falsity  pertain  to  propositions, 


14 


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[150 


to  assertions  in  regard  to  facts,  not  to  facts  in  themselves 
considered.     When  our  affirmations  or  denials  correspond  to, 
correctly  represent  the  nature  of,  the  objects  to  which  they 
relate,  they  are  said  to  be  true:  when  they  do  not  thus  cor- 
respond, they  are  said  to  be  false.     If  one  wishes  to  define 
truth,  what  can  one  do  better  than  say  something  like  this; 
Truth  is  a  correct  representation  of  reality?     But  the  prag- 
matist  defines  truth  in  terms  of  its  effects,  as  that  which 
works  satisfactorily,  which  performs  what  is  expected  of  it, 
as  only  "  the  expedient  in  the  way  of  our  thinking,  just  as 
the  right  is  only  the  expedient  in  our  way  of  behaving."  "^ 
In  order  to  make  this  even  momentarily  plausible,  it  is  neces- 
sary to  expand  the  meaning  of  "  expedient,"  and  "  working 
satisfactorily  "  by  such  qualifications  as  "  on  the  whole,"  "  in 
the  long  run,"  "all  things  considered";  but,  even  after  that 
is  done,  have  we  a  definition  of  truth  ?     No  doubt  that  which 
works  well  "  all  things  considered,"  "  in  the  long  run,"  and 
"on  the  whole"  is  true,  but  is  it  true  because  it  works  in 
this  way,  or  does  it  work  in  this  way  because  it  is  true?     If 
we  invert  the  proper  order  of  the  true  and  the  useful  and 
give  precedence  to  "  useful  "—with  whatever  extension  of 
meaning— we  derogate  from  the  dignity  and  the  authority  of 
truth,  because  we  find  its  essence  to  consist,  not  in  its  rela- 
tion to  reality,  but  in  the  value  of  its  consequences.     We  do 
not  mean  by  truth  that  which  works  well  in  practice,  but 
that  which  correctly  represents  the  nature  of  that  with  which 
it  has  to  do. 

I  do  not  think  that  unprejudiced  common  sense  is  likely  to 
allow  much  weight  to  the  pragmatic  contention  so  far  as  it 
relates  to  the  nature  of  truth.  If  the  claim  is  more  modest 
and  it  is  urged  only  that  the  consequences  of  a  belief  or 
opinion  may  be  properly  taken  as  a  test  or  criterion  of  its 
truth,  one  is  less  likely  to  dissent.  But  even  this  must  not  be 
pushed  too  far.  It  is  obvious  that  the  test  of  consequences 
does  not  apply  everywhere.     In  pure  mathematics,  for  in- 


'  James,  Pragmatism,  p.  222. 


151] 


Edward  H.  Griffin 


15 


stance,  and  wherever  we  are  dealing  with  abstract  relations, 
with  idealities  of  thought,  there  are  no  objective  conse- 
quences; the  criterion  there  is  self-evidence,  intellectual  con- 
sistency. Even  in  respect  to  concrete  things,  the  test  is  not 
universally  applicable.  In  strictness  it  applies  only  where  ex- 
periment is  possible.  I  can  test  the  truth  of  the  assertion 
that  heat  expands  bodies  by  simply  trying  it.  I  can  test  the 
truth  of  any  hypothesis  by  an  appeal  to  consequences,  pro- 
vided I  can  exclude  what  the  logicians  call  the  "plurality 
of  causes."  In  this  way  I  can  assure  myself  that  when  it  is 
said  that  the  atmosphere  presses  with  a  certain  force  per 
square  inch  upon  all  bodies  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  the 
proposition  is  true.  But  if  I  cite  the  prosperity  which  fol- 
lows a  certain  change  in  the  tariff  as  proving  the  wisdom  of 
the  legislation,  my  argument  is  invalid  unless  I  can  show 
that  there  is  nothing  else  which  could  conceivably  occasion 
that  prosperity.  Wlien  we  pass  beyond  the  sphere  of  experi- 
ment and  verifiable  hypothesis,  the  test  of  consequences  is 
much  less  easily  applied.  "  There  is  one  God  and  Moham- 
med is  his  prophet."  It  was  not  the  truth  in  this  rallying 
cry,  but  the  lie,  that  nerved  the  Mohammedan  hosts.  The 
Mohammedan  victories  do  not  prove  the  truth  of  the  asser- 
tion, but  only  the  fitness  of  this  belief  to  win  victories.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  if  I  believe  that  pain  is  an  illusion,  I 
shall  bear  it  better,  but  the  fact  that  I  bear  it  better  because 
I  think  there  is  no  such  thing  does  not  prove  that  there  is 
no  such  thing,  but  only  that  this  belief  is  serviceable,  under 
certain  circumstances  and  to  a  certain  extent.  The  useful 
consequences  which  attend  a  given  belief  may  prove  only  that 
the  state  of  mind  which  the  belief  indicates  or  induces  acts 
favorably.  I  may  be  cured  by  bread  pills,  or  by  a  physician 
who  has  no  professional  competence,  if  I  have  confidence  in 
the  pills  or  in  the  practitioner,  but  that  does  not  show  that 
there  is  any  virtue  in  either. 

"  On  pragmatic  principles,"   says  Professor  James,   "  we 
cannot  safely  reject  any  hypothesis  if  consequences  useful  to 


16 


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[152 


life  flow  from  it."  *     Can  we  venture  to  say  this?     Certainly 
not  unless  we  have  such  a  very  wide  knowledge  of  the  conse- 
quences that  we  are  certain  what  their  summation  is;  there 
may  be  good  consequences  which  are  undeniable,  but  these 
may  be  balanced  by  bad  consequences  which  we  do  not  happen 
to  perceive.     In  any  case,  have  we  a  right  to  assume  that 
utility  always  accompanies  truth?     That  it  does  not  consti- 
tute truth,  we  may  perhaps  agree:  does  it  always  certify  to 
it?     If  utility  is  taken  in  a  sufficiently  comprehensive  sense, 
one  may  say  yes;  it  can  hardly  be  supposed  that  what  is, 
upon  the  whole,  useful  is  false.     But  as  a  practical  maxim 
in  life  it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  the  pragmatic  criterion 
is  very  valuable  beyond  the  sphere  of  experiment.     It  may 
be  very  hard  to  tell,  in  the  case  of  a  philosophical  or  religious 
tenet,  or  even  in  the  case  of  an  historical  institution,  like  the 
Papacy,   what   the   balance  of  consequences   is.     There   are 
other  criteria  that  may  be  more  advantageously  employed. 
In  the  case  of  the  most  sacred  beliefs  of  mankind,  it  is  surely 
unfitting  to  seek  to  establish  them  upon  merely  utilitarian 
grounds.     The  criticism  of  J.  S.  Mill,  in  his  posthumous  es- 
say, '*The  Utility  of  Religion,"  may  be  commended  to  the 
consideration  of  all  Cliristian  apologists.     Because  a  belief  in 
God  and  the  future  life  is  consolatory  to  persons  in  distress: 
because  religion  is  a  useful  social  restraint — it  does  not  fol- 
low that  God  exists,  or  that  religion  is  true.     Truth  is  a 
correct  representation  of  reality,  and  not  merely  something 
which  works  well.     It  is  peculiarly  incumbent  upon  those 
who  represent  the  higher,  ideal  interests  of  mankind  to  bear 
this  distinction  in  mind. 

What,  then,  would  be  our  friend's  verdict  upon  Pragma- 
tism ?  Perhaps  this.  It  does  not  correctly  conceive  the  na- 
ture of  truth,  but  it  renders  a  valuable  service  in  fixing  at- 
tention upon  one  of  its  most  important  proofs — one  which 
we  continually  apply  in  real  life,  and  which,  in  its  proper 
sphere,  is  altogether  indispensable.     In  preaching  the  gospel 


'James,  Pragmatism,  p.  273. 


153] 


Edward  H.  Griffin 


17 


of  efficiency,  it  makes  itself  the  mouthpiece  of  the  current 
sentiment  of  our  time,  and  it  enforces  the  salutary  lesson  that 
every  individual,  and  every  social  institution,  should  be  held 
to  account  for  producing  results  commensurate  with  the  pow- 
ers and  opportunities  possessed.  In  so  far  as  there  is  an 
over-emphasis,  and  the  impression  is  conveyed  that  there  is 
no  criterion  of  truth  except  that  of  consequences,  and  en- 
couragement is  given  to  the  employment  of  utilitarian  con- 
siderations, where  these  are  inapplicable,  the  doctrine  is  mis- 
leading, and,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  mischievous. 

III.  Thus  far,  our  neophyte  has  been  dealing  with  what 
may  be  called  particulars  of  experience.  He  has  asked  what 
manner  of  existence  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  objects  whi^h 
make  up  the  material  world,  whether  they  exist  only  as  ideas 
in  the  mind  of  the  recipient,  or  independently  of  his  knowl- 
edge; and,  if  independently,  whether  the  perceiving  mind 
has  a  substantive  being  over  against,  as  it  were,  the  material 
objects,  or  is,  in  some  way,  identical  with,  or  merged  in,  them. 
He  has  asked,  also,  about  the  knowledge  which  we  have  of 
these  objects — how  it  should  be  defined,  and  whether  it  is 
to  be  obtained  exclusively  through  the  employment  of  the 
methods  and  the  criteria  of  experimentation. 

But  his  thought  would  surely  take  a  wider  range  than  this. 
The  things  and  the  persons  of  our  experience  do  not  present 
themselves  to  us  in  isolation  from  one  another,  but  as  inter- 
related. The  significance  of  the  individual  object  is  seen  to 
consist,  not  merely  in  what  it  is,  but  in  what  it  is  capable  of 
doing  or  becoming  in  its  relation  to  other  individuals.  The 
most  unreflecting  cannot  remain  content  with  details;  he 
must  rise,  in  speculation  and  imagination,  to  some  concep- 
tion of  a  whole  of  things:  questions,  more  or  less  articulate, 
must  suggest  themselves  in  regard  to  the  Universe  as  a  com- 
plex or  totality.  The  ^^  plain  man,"  "  the  man  in  the  street," 
as  the  phrases  are,  has  a  world  view,  as  well  as  the  philos- 
opher. 

In  seeking  to  satisfy  those  "  obstinate  questionings  "  about 


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[154 


the  Ground  and  Meaning  of  the  world,  which  must  some- 
times vex  the  minds  even  of  the  most  thoughtless,  we  may 
suppose  our  friend  to  make  trial  of  the  philosophical  doctrine 
commonly  known  as  *'  absolutism."  This  would  commend 
itself  to  him  on  several  grounds.  In  reacting,  as  we  have 
seen — or  as  we  have  assumed — him  to  do,  against  the  virtual 
elimination  of  mind  by  the  new  realists,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  insisting  upon  the  veritable  and  independent  reality  of 
material  things,  he  has  combined  elements  of  theory  which, 
in  their  extreme  forms,  are  antagonistic,  but  which  may  per- 
haps admit  of  being  reconciled.  "  I  do  not  doubt  that  any- 
thing which  can  ultimately  he,  must  be  of  the  nature  of 
mind  or  experience,  and  therefore  that  reality  must  ultimately 
be  conceived  after  this  manner."  ^  This  is  the  language  of 
Berkeley,  but  with  a  difference.  This  present  day  exponent 
of  absolutism  proceeds:  ^*  But  to  pass  from  this  ultimate  con- 
viction to  the  idea  that  finite  minds  are  the  sole  vehicles 
and  determinants  of  teleology  apart  from  a  '  nature ' — a  rela- 
tively external  and  mechanical  system  by  which  their  content 
is  defined  and  their  individuality  manifested — this  seems  to 
me  as  serious  an  error  as  that  of  the  mechanistic  view  itself." 
And  again  (p.  361)  "  Xature  is  the  world  in  space  and  time, 
abstracted  from  our  momentarv  attitude  and  considered  as 

%■' 

self-existent,  though  at  the  same  time  held  to  be  possessed  of 
qualities  which  presuppose  it  to  be  in  relation  with  a  cogni- 
tive, sentient,  purposive,  and  emotional  being."  Here  we 
have  a  recognition  of  the  constitutive  function  of  mind  in 
knowledge,  combined  with  the  recognition  of  a  genuine  world 
of  real  objectivity.  The  mind  which  is  the  ground  and  es- 
sence of  reality  is  not  the  finite  mind;  matter  is  not  the 
ideas  of  the  individual  consciousness.  So  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned, the  material  world  is  an  extra-mental  fact,  existing  in 
independence  of  our  minds,  though  not  in  independence  of  all 
mind.     The  duality  of  experience  is  thus  fully  provided  for, 


^Bernard   Bosanquet,    The  Principle  of  Individuality   and   Value, 
p.  135. 


155] 


Edward  IL  Griffin 


19 


but  the  unmediated  dualism,  which  to  many  persons  seems  so 
objectionable  a  feature  of  the  ordinary  realism,  is  transcended. 
Besides  the  advantage  of  thus  bringing  together  an  idealistic 
metaphysic  and  a  realistic  doctrine  of  perception,  this  form 
of  world-theory  has  the  further  advantage  of  providing  for  a 
true  Universe.  It  brings  all  things  under  one  all-inclusive, 
all  comprehending  Mind,  the  all  Knowing,  Absolute  Thought 
or  Self.  It  thus  satisfies  the  instinctive  demand,  alike  of 
scientific  intelligence  and  aesthetic  feeling,  for  order,  unity, 
and  harmony.  The  aspect  of  the  world  upon  which  it  most 
delights  to  dwell  is  its  rationality.  Moreover,  it  makes  its 
appeal  to  ethical  feeling  also,  in  that  it  enthrones  spirit  over 
matter,  exalts  the  concept  of  personality,  at  least  as  it  views 
personality,  construes  ultimate  reality  in  terms  of  ideal  per- 
ception.  Many  have  found  in  this  form  of  idealism  a  val- 
uable ally  of  religion.  Our  inquiring  friend  would  doubtless 
be  impressed  by  the  imposing  list  of  theologians,  and  theolo- 
gically-minded philosophers,  who  have  employed  it  in  this 
way.  The  first  work  of  Professor  Koyce  which  attracted  gen- 
eral attention,  "The  Eeligious  Aspect  of  Philosophy,"  was 
an  interpretation  of  Hegelianism  from  this  point  of  view. 
An  optimistic  view  of  the  world  naturally  goes  with  this 
philosophy.  The  absolute  and  all-thinking  Mind  takes  up 
all  discords  and  oppositions  into  itself  and  reconciles  them. 
Wliatever  the  surface  appearances  may  be,  at  the  heart  of 
things  abides  a  central  peace. 

It  is  not  strange  that  a  doctrine  which  has  so  much  to 
commend  it  should  have  numbered  so  many  adherents,  and 
we  may  be  sure  that  a  thoughtful  and  impartial  seeker  after 
truth  would  give  serious  consideration  to  its  claims.  A  ques- 
tion or  misgiving  might  suggest  itself,  growing  out  of  the 
prominence  given,  in  the  characterisation  of  the  Absolute,  to 
the  knowing  attribute.  Thought  is  consecutive  and  conca- 
tenated— we  speak  of  a  chain  of  reasoning:  if  the  relation 
of  the  Absolute  to  the  finite  universe  is  analogous  to  that  of 
the  thinker  to  his  thought,  if  the  development  of  the  cosmos 


20 


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[156 


is  akin  to  the  working  out  of  a  process  of  logic,  there  seems 
to  be  no  room  left  in  the  world  for  alternatives,  for  the 
entrance  of  anything  new,  for  the  free  choice  of  personal 
beings.     Furthermore,  the  connotation  given  to  the  attribute 
"eternal,"  meaning,  not  duration  throughout  all  time,  but 
timelessness,  existence  out  of  time,  seems  to  identify  the  real 
with  the  changeless,  and  thus  to  deny  to  the  world  of  temporal 
change  the  character  of  reality.     The  "  timeless  "  character 
on  which  absolutism  lays  so  much  stress  takes  the  Absolute 
out  of  our  cognizance  or  realization.     Whatever  harmonizing 
of  discords,  and  rectifying  of  injustices,  there  may  be,  takes 
place  in  this  supra-temporal  sphere,  and  it  is  hard  to  see 
how  it  can  bring  any  alleviation  to  the  ills  of  our  actual 
human  lot.     If,  by  any  chance,  our  inquirer  could  be  sup- 
posed to  have  acquaintance  with  Spinoza,  he  would  be  struck 
by   the   numerous   points   of   resemblance   between   the   two 
systems:  in  particular  he  would  note  the  number  of  familiar 
words  used,  by  the  absolutists,  and  by  the  great  seventeenth 
century  exponent  of  pantheism,  in  unfamiliar  senses.     Such 
words  as  God,  Self,  Spirit,  Will,  person,  freedom,  good  and 
evil,  bear  a  very  different  sense  in  Hegelian  and  Xeo-Hegcl- 
ian  usage  from  that  which  we  are  accustomed  to  give  them, 
and  a  strict  scrutiny  of  the  way  in  which  they  are  used  divests 
the  system  of  much  of  its  first  atractiveness.     A  sense  of 
vagueness  and  unreality,  of  inapplicability  to  real  problems, 
arises   in   our  minds.     The  conception   of   the   world   as   a 
unified    whole,   the   product   and   expression   of   an    Infinite 
Keason:  the  insistence  upon  spirit  as  ultimately  real,  upon 
"self-consciousness,"  to  quote  the  words  of  Mr.  Bosanquet, 
"as  the  clue  to  the  Typical   Structure  of  Reality";  these 
postulates  seem  to  promise  a  metaphysical  construction  satis- 
factory alike  to  the  man  of  science  and  to  the  theologian,  but 
as  wrought  out  by  the  leading  representatives  of  the  school — 
both  English  and  American — they  invite  criticism  from  both 
sides,  since  science  assumes  the  reality  of  time  and  of  physical 
changes,  and  ethics  and  religion  demand  a  much  more  ex- 


157] 


Edward  H.  Griffin 


21 


plicit  recognition  of  the  volitional  elements  of  experience  than 
this  intellectualistic  metaphysic  concedes. 

Upon  the  whole,  our  inquirer  may  be  imagined  to  have  a 
divided  mind,  to  recognise  some  features  of  this  absolutist 
system  as  true  and  fine  and  suggestive,  and  others  as  dubious. 
A  semi-mystical  elevation  of  sentiment,  such  as  one  finds 
in  Spinoza,  compels  his  admiration,  while  an  underlying 
feeling  of  questioning  and  discontent  remains. 

IV.  And  so  it  is  not  strange  that  he  should  lend  a 
listening  ear  to  a  type  of  doctrine  which  has  become  current 
of  recent  years,  to  which  the  name  Personalism  has  been 
applied — sometimes  known  also  as  Humanism  (a  name  given 
it  by  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  one  of  its  English  exponents,  which 
has  the  advantage  of  being  the  antithesis  of  naturalism,  of 
suggesting  an  interpretation  of  the  universe  in  terms  of  man, 
rather  than  of  nature),  known  also,  still  more  descriptively, 
as  Pluralism.  Putting  several  terms  together,  we  may  call  it 
pluralistic,  personal  idealism. 

The  pluralistic  personal  idealist  holds  that  all  reality  is 
of  the  nature  of  mind,  and  that  self,  or  individual,  or  person, 
or  some  such  word,  may  be  properly  employed  to  express  its 
nature,  but  that,  instead  of  being  unified  in  One  Absolute 
Self,  Individual  or  Person,  the  universe  consists  of  a  com- 
munity of  related  selves.  The  primitive  state,  if  we  may  use 
such  an  expression,  must  be  conceived  as  a  totality  of  unique 
individuals,  each  possessing  a  certain  conatus  sese  conservandi 
— an  impulse  toward  self-preservation  or  self-realization. 
This  revolt  from  Absolutism  is  described  by  James  Ward 
thus :  "  The  twentieth  century  opens  with  the  attempt  to  work 
out  the  idealistic  interpretation,  not  in  the  old  way  as  es- 
sentially a  devolution  of  the  One,  but  rather — as  far  as  pos- 
sible— to  represent  it  as  an  evolution  of  the  Many.  In 
England,  in  America,  in  France,  even  in  Germany — once  the 
stronghold  of  Absolutism — systems  of  pluralism  are  more  or 
less  rife."  ^^     Professor  James  expressed  the  contrast  between 


*"  James  Ward :  The  Realm  of  Ends :  Pluralism  and  Theism,  p.  49. 


22 


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[158 


Absolutism  and  Pluralism  by  saying  that  the  one  explains 
parts  by  wholes,  and  the  other  explains  wholes  by  parts,  the 
one  conceives  reality  under  the  *'  all-form/'  the  other  under 
the  "  each  form."  The  student  of  philosophy  will  be  at  once 
reminded  of  Leibnitz :  one  not  thus  provided  with  a  historical 
analogue  will  soon  discover  that  the  conception  is  something 
like  this:  Innumerable  personal  beings,  each  acting  out  its 
own  individual  impulses:  these  impulses  becoming  more  and 
more  concurrent  and  co-operative  under  the  operation  of  na- 
tural laws  of  selection,  imitation,  custom,  tradition,  social 
institutions  of  various  kinds,  conserving  what  has  been  gained, 
and  making  possible  an  approximately  continuous  progress: 
so  that  a  relatively  coherent  whole  may  be  realised  as  the  re- 
sult of  the  independent  action  of  individuals,  each  of  whom 
is  absolutely  undetermined  by  any  power  outside  itself:  the 
Universe  thus  being  not  the  expression  of  the  Thought  of  an 
Absolute  but  the  resultant  of  forces  proceeding  from  each  of 
the  beings  making  up  the  totality  of  the  community  of  selves. 
This  is  not  necessarily  an  atheistic  doctrine:  many,  if  not 
most,  of  the  pluralistic  idealists  are  theists,  as  Leibnitz  was; 
but  the  sphere  of  the  Divine  agency  is  limited :  God  is  not 
unqualifiedly  Sovereign,  but  primus  inter  pares:  the  self- 
contradictory  expression  "a  finite  God," — first  employed,  in 
criticism  of  the  pluralistic  doctrine,  by  its  opponents — has 
been  sometimes  employed  by  them  as  an  emphatic  w^ay  of 
affirming  the  existence  of  unresolved,  indeterminate  elements 
or  factors  in  the  universe,  potentialities  of  personality,  lying 
outside  the  Divine  power  or  the  Divine  knowdedge. 

This  extreme  emphasis  upon  the  individual  is  of  course  a 
protest  against  the  all-absorbing  monism  of  the  absolutist. 
It  is  an  affirmation  of  the  genuine  autonomy  of  finite  selves, 
conceiving  them  as  spiritual  entities  and  not  mere  functions 
or  aspects  of  the  One  Sole  Reality.  In  dealing  with  the  prob- 
lem of  evil  this  form  of  idealism  has  an  undeniable  advantage 
over  the  rival  theory.  The  monistic  idealist,  however  unwill- 
ing he  may  be  to  recognize  it,  does  really  vacate  the  concept 


159] 


Edward  IL  Griffin 


23 


of  evil,  both  physical  and  moral,  of  its  meaning.  There  can- 
not be  anything  essentially  evil  in  a  world  which  is  the  work- 
ing out  of  an  absolute  thought  or  will.  All  evil  is  relative  and 
partial;  it  is  transcended,  and  becomes,  in  the  final  issue,  a 
means  to  good.  The  significance  of  moral  distinctions  is 
much  more  definitely  maintained  by  the  pluralist.  The  un- 
reasoning optimism  w^hich  hands  over  all  the  oppositions  and 
difficulties  of  life  to  the  Absolute,  serenely  confident  that  it 
will  come  out  right  in  the  end— a  comfortable  faith  which 
so  easily  degenerates  into  cowardice  and  negligence — finds  no 
favor  with  the  pluralist.  To  him,  the  world  is  the  scene  of 
a  real  struggle,  the  results  of  which  are  not  predetermined. 
Things  will  come  right  if  they  are  made  to  come  right,  but 
not  otherwise.  It  may  be  that  "somehow  good  will  be  the 
final  goal  of  ill,"  but,  if  so,  this  will  be  a  consummation 
accomplished  in  the  sphere  of  time  and  history,  and  not  in  a 
supratemporal  realm. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  ethics  and  practical  life,  the 
pluralistic  metaphysic  is  to  be  preferred.  The  question 
which  may  occur  to  the  dispassionate  inquirer,  is,  of  course, 
whether  in  each  of  these  contrasted  systems  we  have  not  a 
disproportionate  emphasis  upon  truths  neglected  by  the  op- 
posing doctrine,  whether  monistic  and  pluralistic  idealism 
may  not  be  combined  in  such  a  way  as  to  take  the  truth,  and 
reject  the  error,  of  each,  and  in  this  way  a  world  view  be  at- 
tained which  will  represent  a  higher  synthesis  than  either. 

James  Ward,  using  a  political  analogy,  asks  under  what 
kind  of  constitution  we  may  best  conceive  the  world  of  living 
and  acting  things  to  be  administered — in  case  we  have  a 
realm  of  ends :  "  is  it,"  he  suggests,  "  a  more  or  less  orderly 
democracy,  is  it  a  limited  monarchy,  or  is  it  possibly  an 
absolute  one."  ^^  Absolutism  is,  of  course,  the  absolute  mon- 
archy ;  pluralism  is  the  democracy ;  what  is  the  philosophical 
counterpart  of  that  intermediate  form  of  civil  order,  which 
the  instinct  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples,  at  once  liberty-loving 


"  The  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  22. 


24 


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[160 


and  law-abiding,  has  preferred?  Whatever  terms  of  techni- 
cal description  we  may  employ,  the  theory  which  mediates 
between  the  absolutist  and  the  pluralist  will  coincide,  in  its 
essential  features,  with  Theism.  Our  inquirer  may  thus  be 
led  to  decide  that  the  theistic  theory,  which  certainly  best 
serves  the  purposes  of  religion,  best  serves  also  the  purposes 
of  philosophy. 

It  may  be  that  tlie  conclusions  with  which  our  suppositi- 
tious friend  has  been  credited  will  seem  somewhat  common- 
place. We  have  imagined  him  to  emerge  from  his  philosophi- 
cal investigations  with  these  results.  He  is  a  realist,  but  not 
a  new  realist.  He  recognizes  the  value  and  the  necessity  of 
the  pragmatic  method,  but  he  restricts  it  within  narrower 
limits  than  those  frequently  claimed  for  it.  He  pays  homage 
to  the  great  masters  of  monistic  idealism,  and  at  the  same 
time  responds  s}Tnpathetically  to  the  pluralistic  protest.  Not 
in  weak  compromise,  but,  as  it  seems  to  him,  in  constructive 
synthesis,  he  combines  these  two  world-interpretations  in  one 
which  has  points  of  accord  with,  and  points  of  dissent  from, 
each. 

These  conclusions  may  be  commonplace,  but  it  is  pertinent 
to  ask  whether  thev  are  not  the  conclusions  which  commend 
themselves  to  the  great  majority  of  plain,  common-sense 
people,  who,  after  all,  render  the  final  verdict  of  the  world 
in  matters  of  speculation  as  well  as  in  the  various  spheres  of 
practical  life. 


161] 


Knight  Dunlap 


25 


IMAGES  AND  IDEAS 

By  Knight  Dunlap 

Associate  Professor  of  Psychology 


Seven  years  ago  I  began  to  tell  my  students  that  the  con- 
ventional doctrine  of  '^  mental  images  "  is,  in  my  estimation, 
largely  fiction,  and  to  direct  their  attention  to  a  simpler  and 
more  empirical  analysis  of  the  process  and  content  in  imagi- 
nation. Two  years  ago  I  published  a  brief  text-book  in 
which  I  expressed  this  radical  view:  ^  but  as  the  reception  by 
other  psychologists  of  its  earlier  informal  expressions  had 
not  been  highly  encouraging,  I  put  it  in  print  with  the  least 
disturbance  of  terminology  consistent  with  honesty;  retain- 
ing the  term  '  image,'  but  defining  it  to  mean  not  a  specific 
sort  of  content,  but  rather  any  content  of  which  one  is  con- 
scious in  the  specific  way  which  is  commonly  called  '  think- 
ing '  as  opposed  to  '  perceiving,'  and  pointing  out  that  those 
who  could  not  give  up  the  official  theory  might  continue 
to  use  the  term  in  the  old  way.  This  procedure  enabled  me 
to  discuss  perception,  memory  and  kindred  topics  so  that 
the  statements  made  were  true,  whether  the  reader  accepted 
my  view  or  adhered  to  the  older  one :  a  result  which,  at  that 
time,  it  was  desirable  to  obtain. 

It  is  now  time  to  make  a  full  break  with  the  conventional 
theory  of  imagery,  and  to  state  the  empirical  doctrine  above 
mentioned  in  the  most  positive  and  unequivocal  way  possible. 
This  course  is  rendered  advisable  by  the  fact  that  some  of  the 
critical  readers  of  my  text-book  were  puzzled  by  what  ap- 
peared to  them  vacillation  in  the  treatment  of  imagination,^ 
and  is  rendered  imperative  by  the  recent  developments  in 
what  is  called  '^  behaviorism,'  in  which  the  rejection  of  ima- 

^  A  System  of  Psychology,  Scribners,  1912,  pp.  16,  153-168. 
'  E.  g.,  Langfeld,  H.  S.,  Psych.  Bull.,  1913,  x,  35-36. 


26 


Images  and  Ideas 


[160 


gery  is  coupled  with  an  extreme  development  of  empirical 
thought-analysis  which  makes  my  system  seem  now  quite 
conservative.^  I  am  obliged  to  protest  against  the  behavior- 
ist  doctrine  of  thought  since  I  feel  that  the  more  conservative 
innovation  may  suffer  from  the  opposition  which  will  be 
called  out  by  the  extreme  doctrine. 

We  must  distinguish  more  carefully  than  has  heretofore 
been  customary  between  '  consciousness '  and  '  content.' 
'  Consciousness '  is  awareness  of  anvthinoj  whatever,  and 
'  content '  is  the  anything  0/  which  one  is  conscious  or  aware. 
The  distinction  is  perfectly  clear  but  heretofore  psychology 
has  avoided  it.  ''  Sensation,"  for  example,  has  been  used 
convert ibly  for  both  an  elementary  quality  of  content  and  for 
the  awareness  of  that  quality.  So  with  the  other  *'  elemen- 
tary forms  of  consciousness  " — affective  and  conative  fac- 
tors: one  is  rarely  certain  whether  an  author  means  actually 
consciousness,  or  content,  when  he  refers  to  them. 

This  distinction  between  consciousness  and  content  must 
be  kept  in  mind  throughout  this  discussion,  or  else  much  of 
it  will  be  misunderstood.  The  term  sensation,  in  particular, 
is  always  to  be  taken  as  indicating  a  perceived  (or  percep- 
tible) factor,  and  never  the  perceiving  thereof.  Wien  I 
speak  of  '  muscular  sensation '  I  mean  the  peculiar  aspect  of 
the  actual  muscle-contraction  which  is  perceived  by  the  owner 
of  the  muscle,  and  by  him  alone.  The  contraction  has 
visible  aspects,  and  tangible  aspects,  which  may  be  perceived 
by  several  people:  in  addition  it  has  this  '  kinaesthetic ' 
aspect  which  can  be  perceived  by  one  person  only. 

An  image,  as  understood  in  current  psychology,  is  a  form 
of  sensory  content,  though  not  exactly  a  sensation.  Just 
how  it  is  supposed  to  differ  from  a  sensation  is  not  at  the 
present  moment  an  important  consideration,  since  there  is  a 
variety  of  opinion  on  the  point.^     The  fundamental  likeness 

'  Watson,    John    B.,    *'  Image    and   Affection    in    Behavior,"   Jour. 
Philos.  etc.,   1913,  x,  422-424. 

*  Ziehen,    Leitfaden    der    physiologischen    Physiologic,    9te,    Aufl., 


163] 


Knight  Dunlap 


27 


of  image  to  sensation  consists  in  the  image  having  the  mo- 
dality of  the  sensation  from  which  it  is  derived.  Some 
images,  accordingly,  are  visual,  some  are  auditory,  some  are 
gustatory,  and  so  on.  This  modality  of  images  is  usually 
understood  as  being  the  fact  that  the  images,  in  themselves, 
differ  qualitatively  in  the  same  way  in  which  sensations 
differ.  For  example,  the  fundamental  difference  between 
visual  images  and  auditory  images  is  of  the  same  order  as 
the  difference  between  visual  and  auditory  sensation.  An 
'  idea '  is  commonly  defined  as  '  an  image  with  its  meaning.' 
I  may,  it  is  supposed,  have  an  'image'  of  a  dark  brown 
rectangle  with  a  gold  design  on  it;  but  that  image  has  no 
more  value  in  thouglit  than  the  stars  I  see  when  I  bump  my 
head  against  the  steampipe  in  the  basement,  unless  I  have 
also  the  consciousness  that  the  colored  rectangle  stands  for, 
or  refers  to,  a  copy  of  Hobbes's  Leviathan  lying  on  my  table, 
or  some  such  object  other  than  the  image  itself. 

Of  what  use,  we  might  ask,  is  the  image?  What  is  its 
function  in  the  process  of  ideation?  Since,  in  addition  to 
being  conscious  of  the  image,  I  must  also  be  conscious 
of  the  object  to  which  it  refers,  should  I  not  get  on  just  as 
well  if  I  were  conscious  of  the  object  alone?  Or  rather, 
should  I  not  get  along  better,  since  I  should  then  have  but 
one  think  to  deal  with  instead  of  two?  From  the  point  of 
view  of  the  conventional  doctrine  of  images,  the  only  pos- 
sible answer  is  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  image  does  appear 
when  one  thinks  of  the  object,  and  therefore  that  it  must 
have  some  function.  It  seems  fair  to  assume  that  the  doc- 
trine of  images  would  never  have  been  developed  in  its 
elaborate  form,  nor  have  been  so  tenaciously  held,  if  there 
were  not  actually  some  present  content  inseparably  asso- 
ciated with  the  thought  of  an  absent  object.  What  may  be 
this  factor  at  the  basis  of  the  conventional  image  theory, 


146  ff.;  Titchener,  Text-hook  of  Psychologyy  Pt.  1,  197-199;  Angell, 
Psychology,  4th  Ed.,  152;  Stout,  Groundwork  of  Psychology,  2d  Ed., 
106-109. 


28 


Images  and  Ideas 


[161 


it  is  our  business  to  find  out.  It  is  also  probable  that  the 
doctrine  of  images  is  acceptable  because  it  aids  us  to  mini- 
mize the  consideration  of  a  remarkable  and  puzzling  pecu- 
liarity of  consciousness:  the  fact,  namely,  that  we  can  be 
conscious  of  what  is  not  present  either  in  space  or  in  time. 
I  can  be  conscious  of  objects  which  are  so  far  removed  that 
they  can  exert  no  appreciable  influence  on  my  body,  or  which 
even  no  longer  exist.  Xot  only,  I  repeat,  may  the  past  in- 
fluences of  such  an  object  on  my  body  in  certain  cases  influ- 
ence my  present  behavior, — a  fact  which  may  be  given  a 
purely  physiological  explanation;  but  the  object  can  be  in  or 
before  my  consciousness;  that  is  to  say,  I  think  of  it,— 
a  fact  of  whicli  psychology  alone  can  take  scientific  cogni- 
zance. 

Psychology,  however,  has  shrunk  from  the  acknowledgment 
of  this  transcendent  power  of  consciousness  and  has  turned 
her  attention  almost  exclusively  to  the  forms  of  experience 
which  are  seemingly  more  commonplace,  namely,  the  ex- 
perience of  the  present  or  immediate  contents  of  the  thought. 
It  has,  therefore,  made  much  of  the  image  and  has  ascribed 
to  it  certain  characteristics  which  belong  really  not  to  the 
image,  but  to  the  ultimate  object  of  thought. 

1  contend  that  the  image,  as  a  copy  or  reproduction  of 
sensation  of  variable  mode  does  not  exist.  There  is  indeed 
a  present  content  essentially  connected  with  imagination  or 
thought;  but  this  present  content  is  in  each  case  a  muscle 
sensation,  or  a  complex  of  muscle  sensations.  We  are,  there- 
fore, in  investigating  images,  dealing  not  with  copies,  or 
pale  ghosts,  of  former  sensations  but  with  actual  present 
sensations. 

The  image,  defined  as  a  mere  shadow  of  an  auditory  object, 
a  visual  object,  or  an  object  of  some  other  mode  of  sense, 
has  no  discoverable  explanatory  function,  even  if  the  exist- 
ence of  such  an  image  be  admitted.  But  the  muscle  sen- 
sation renders  an  explanatory  service  which  is  badly  needed 
in  psychology.  In  order  to  demonstrate  this,  let  us  turn  to 
the  essential  condition  of  consciousness;  the  arc-reflex. 


165] 


Knight  Dunlap 


29 


The  unit  of  psycho-physiological  activity  is  a  reflex,  through 
an  arc  which  starts  from  a  sensory  neuron  terminal,  or 
receptor,^  passes  across  two  or  more  synapses,  and  termi- 
nates in  a  modification  of  the  activity  of  one  of  the  effectors, 
of  which  there  are  three  classes,  (a)  striped  muscle,  (b) 
smooth  and  cardiac  muscle,  and  (d)  glands,  l^o  conscious- 
ness occurs  without  a  complete  arc-reflex,  although  certain 
reflexes  apparently  produce  no  consciousness.  The  difference 
between  the  psycho-physiological  and  the  purely  physiological 
reflexes  ^  is  an  important  subject  for  investigation,  but  not 
urgent  for  the  present  discussion,  in  which  we  are  assuming 
nothing  concerning  the  reflexes  which  can  conceivably  be 
altered  by  any  findings  with  regard  to  the  difference  men- 
tioned. 

In  actual  life  there  are  no  simple  arcs.  Currents  sent  ia 
over  different  afferent  routes  are  collected  in  the  centers 
and  redistributed  over  many  efferent  routes.  It  is  neverthe- 
less legitimate  to  describe  the  neuro-muscular  functions 
analytically  in  terms  of  simple  or  unitary  arcs  and  reflexes. 

Having  regard  to  the  termini  of  the  arcs,  we  can  dis- 
tinguish three  kinds  of  reflex:  striped-muscular,  smooth - 
muscular,  and  glandular.  Having  regard  to  both  starting 
places  and  termini,  we  shall  find  it  important  to  distin- 
guish between  the  arcs  which  connect  similar  structures,  and 
which  accordingly  may  be  called  liomeodetic,  and  those  which 


^The  'receptors'  are:  the  rod-cells  and  cone-cells  of  the  retina; 
the  hair-cells  of  the  internal  ear;  the  gustatory  cells  of  the  taste- 
buds;  the  olfactory  cells;  the  various  corpuscles  and  bulbs  in  which 
sensory  nerve  fibres  terminate  in  the  skin,  mucous  membrane,  and 
connective  tissue:  the  'free'  endings  of  sensory  fibers  in  various 
tissues;  and  the  muscle- spindles  which  lie  in  the  voluntary  (striped) 
muscles  and  are  the  specific  receptors  for  the  '  muscle  sense.'  There 
are  apparently  no  sensory  endings  in  glands,  and  it  is  questionable 
whether  the  afferent  terminals  in  connection  with  smooth  muscle 
are   normally   sensory;    i.   e.,   whether   normally   than   can   initiate 

conscious  reflexes. 

«By  'purely  physiological'  reflexes  I  mean  those  reflexes  which 
do  not  directly  produce,  or  condition,  consciousness. 


30 


Images  and  Ideas 


[166 


connect  dissimilar  structures,  and  which  may  accordingly 
be  called  heterodetic.  We  have  at  present  no  reason  to 
assume  that  smooth-muscular  and  glandular  reflexes  may  not 
be  psychological:  but  we  are  certain  that  the  striped-mus- 
cular reflexes  have  a  large  share  in  conditioning  conscious- 
ness, and,  as  I  shall  attempt  to  show,  that  they  are  the 
essential  mechanisms  for  associative  thinking;  hence  we  may 
for  the  time  being  neglect  the  flrst  mentioned  classes,  con- 
cerning which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  possess  little  infor- 
mation/ 

Heterodetic  arcs  may  terminate  in  any  of  the  three  classes 
of  effectors;  homeodetic  arcs  are  perhaps  of  the  muscular 
types  only,  since  there  have  been  no  afferent  terminals  dis- 
covered in  glands.  The  peculiarity  of  the  homeodetic  arc 
is  that  the  effect  of  one  reflex  initiates  another;  a  heterodetic 
muscular  reflex  may  therefore  be  followed  by  a  sequence  of 
homeodetic  reflexes— a  sequence  which  will  be  brought  to  an 
end  by  another  heterodetic  reflex,  from  muscle  to  gland;  or 

'  The  sinooth  muscles  and  the  glands  undoubtedly  have  important 
psycho-physiological  function,  but  the  details  can  not  at  present  be 
determined.     It  is  possible  that  the  experiences  of  desire  and  aver- 
sion are  conditioned  by  reflexes  from  certain  of  the  smooth  muscles; 
hunger  from  the  muscular  coat  of  the  stomach,  sexual  desire  from 
the  involuntary  muscles  of  the  genital  organs,   all  other  forms  of 
desire  being  possibly  reducible  to  these  basic  appetites  and  thirst— 
at    whose    reflex    conditions    we    can    guess    with    less    plausibility. 
Other  affective  experiences  may  also  be  conditioned  by  reflexes  from 
smooth  muscular  systems,  and  from  cardiac  muscle.     The  muscular 
coats  of  the  blood   vessels,   for   example,   have   long  been   suspected 
of  participation  in  the  production  of  pleasure  and  pain.     The  arrec- 
tores   pilorum   in   the   skin   may  have  a  specific   affective   function. 
We  are  not  at  present  able  to  declare  that  the  terminus  ad  qucm 
of   the   arc    is   without    importance,    and   we  must    therefore    admit 
the  possibility  that   the   reflexes   to   smooth   muscle   and    to  glands 
may  have  effects  on  consciousness  which  are  characteristic  regardless 
of  the  terminus  a  quo.     The  morphology  of  glandular  and ''smooth 
muscular  arcs   must   be  more   fully   known   before   speculation   con- 
cerning the  corresponding  reflexes  can  be  useful. 


167] 


Knight  Dunlap 


31 


by  '  drainage '  into  another  arc  system ;  or  possibly  by  a 
positive  inhibition  reflex. 

Restricting  our  attention  once  more  to  the  cognitive  or 
striped  muscle  arcs,  it  becomes  at  once  apparent  that  the 
heterodetic  striped-muscle  arc  conditions  perception  and  the 
homeodetic   arc   conditions   thought.     This   deduction   from 
the  hypothesis  of  reflex  arcs  provides  at  once  two  things  of 
which  psychology  has  long  been  in  want;  a  physiological  ex- 
planation of  the  association  of  ideas,  and  an  explanation  of 
the  nature  of  so-called  '  mental  images.'     The  way  in  which 
a  given  series  of  homeodetic  reflexes,  once  established,  mav 
become  a  habit,   thus  conditioning  an  associative  train  of 
thought,  is  so  obvious  that  we  need  spend  no  time  at  pre- 
sent in  amplifying  this  detail.     The  manner  in  which  such  a 
series  becomes  established  requires  some  further  explanation. 
Let  A'  —  a,  B'  —  h,  and  C"  —  c  ®  represent  heterodetic  mus- 
cular arcs  (that  it,  perceptual  arcs)  which  have  become  ha- 
bitual.    If  on  certain  occasions   we  have  reflexes  through 
these  in  succession,  we  may  have  the  afferent  current  from 
a'  collected  by  central  neurons  and  combined  with  the  cur- 
rent from  A'  into  the  discharge  to  6 ;  similarly,  the  current 
from  h^  collected  and  combined  with  the  discharge  to  c,  and 
so  on.     As  a  result  of  this  process,  especially  if  the  serial 
stimulation  of  A\  B',  and  C"  is  repeated  a  number  of  times, 
we  have  the  homeodetic  arcs  a'  —  h,  V  —  c,  and  so  on,  estab- 
lished as  paths  of  habitual  reflexes.     In  other  words:  the 
sets    of    muscular    contractions    habitually    associated    with 
A^,  B^,  C"  and  so  on,  have  become  associated  into  a  series. 

Going  back  now  one  step  farther ;  the  reflex,  although  rep- 
resented above  as  occurring  in  a  simple  arc  from  A^  to  a,  is 
really  a  complicated  reflex  built  up  in  a  manner  similar  to 
that  in  which  the  homeodetic  reflex  a'  —  a  is  established. 
That  which  was  originally  a  simple  discharge  from  AV  has, 
in  the  course  of  many  repetitions,  been  combined  with  dis- 


•  See  Fig.  1. 
9  See  Fig.  2. 


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169] 


Knight  Dunlap 


33 


charges  in  many  other  arcs,  M'  —  m,  N'  —  n,  0'  —  o,  etc., 
and  thns  not  only  may  homeodetic  arcs  between  a  and  m',  n\ 
o\  etc.,  have  been  established,  but  also  central  connections 
between  A' —  a,  M'  —  m,  Is'  —  n,  O'  —  o,  etc.,  have  been 
formed.  xVs  a  consequence  of  this  central  fusion  a  condition 
has  been  established  such  that  a  current  from  A'  alone  will 
be  distributed,  not  to  a  alone,  but  also  to  m,  n,  o,  etc.  That 
is  to  say,  stimulation  of  A  alone  will  produce  somewhat, 
though  not  exactly,  the  same  results  which  would  earlier 
have  been  produced  by  the  stimulation  of  A',  M' ,  N',  0',  etc. 

At  this  point  our  analysis  compels  us  to  plunge  into  the 
epistomological  whirlpool,  but  by  holding  fast  to  our  arc- 
reflex  hypothesis  we  can  come  safely  through.  The  hetero- 
detic  arc  A' —  a,  in  its  simplest  or  original  form,  conditions 
the  consciousness  of  A,  the  sense  quality  corresponding  to 
the  stimulation  A',  In  the  case  of  retinal  stimulation,  A' 
is  the  process  in  the  cone-cell,  and  A  is  the  color  actually 
'  seen.'  A  is  properly  called  the  sensation  in  one  of  the 
several  meanings  of  that  term;  namely,  that  which  we  are 
conscious  of  or  perceive  through  the  mediation  of  a  sense 
organ.  M,  N,  0,  etc.,  therefore,  are  other  sense  qualities,  or 
sensations,  the  consciousness  of  which  is  conditioned  by  the 
arcs  M'  —  m,  N'  —  n,  O'  —  o,  etc.  The  final,  more  com- 
plex, reflex  from  A'  to  a  and  also  to  m,  n,  o,  etc.,  conditions 
therefore  the  perception  of  A,  together  with  its  associates, 
M,  N,  0,  etc.  In  concrete  illustrative  terms :  the  visual  pre- 
sentation of  an  apple  no  longer  arouses  visual  perception 
merely,  but  arouses  also  the  perception  of  the  gustatory,  ol- 
factory, tactual,  and  possibly  the  thermal  qualities  of  the 

apple. 

It  might  be  urged  that  in  considering  the  arc-reflex  as  the 
condition  of  consciousness  we  have  put  the  emphasis  in  an 
almost  exclusive  way  on  the  efferent  side;  that  it  seems  to  . 
make  no  difference  where  the  reflex  originates,  so  long  as 
its  terminations  are  of  a  certain  sort.  This  is  not  an  accu- 
rate deduction.     The  consciousness  conditioned  by  the  reflex 


34 


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171] 


Knight  Dunlap 


35 


from  A'  to  a,  m,  n,  o,  etc.,  is  not  the  same  as  that  conditioned 
by  the  simultaneous  reflexes  A'  — a,  M'  —  m,  N'  —  n, 
Q^  _  0^  etc.  In  concrete  terms :  the  perception  of  the  apple 
presented  to  the  eye  alone  is  not  the  same  as  the  perception 
of  the  apple  which  is  sensibly  seen,  tasted,  smelled  and  felt 
at  once  or  in  quick  succession.  Perception,  in  other  words, 
is  not  mere  multiple  sensory  intuition,  and  we  shall  show 
later  that  it  is  not,  on  the  other  hand,  mere  sensory  intuition 
plus  imagination,  even  in  an  analytical  interpretation. 

Passing  on  to  the  topic  of  present  chief  interest :  what  is 
the  content  of  thought?  Again  we  have  a  deduction  from 
our  fundamental  hypothesis  which  is  amply  verified  by  obser- 
vation. There  are  two  contents  for  every  state  of  thought- 
consciousness.  First,  the  muscular  contraction  which  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  initiation  of  the  homeodetic  reflex— not 
the  muscular  contraction  considered  as  a  concrete  whole,  but 
that  aspect  of  it  which  we  call  the  muscle  sensation.  The 
contraction  as  a  whole  is  visible  and  tangible,  as  well  as 
sensible  though  the  mediation  of  the  muscle  spindle.  When 
we  speak  of  contraction  we  intend  the  total  of  the  properties 
of  the  process,  or  at  least  several  of  them,  just  as  when  we 
speak  of  an  apple  we  mean  the  total,  or  several,  properties  of 
the  object.  The  perception  of  the  contraction  as  a  complex 
fact  may  be  conditioned  by  a  reflex  from  the  muscle  over  an 
arc  built  up  in  the  way  described  for  the  complex  visual  arc 
above.  The  direct  or  immediate  content  of  the  homeodetic 
arc  consciousness  is,  however,  the  muscle  sensation  (or  sen- 
sation complex).  This  sensation  is  the  true  image.  Sec- 
ondlv,  the  consciousness  conditioned  by  the  homeodetic  arc- 
reflex  may  have  for  its  ultimate  or  derivative  object  the  ob- 
ject of  the  perceptual  consciousness  conditioned  by  the  hete- 
rodetic  arc  which  originally  terminated  in  the  muscular  con- 
tractions initiating  the  homeodetic  arc  in  question.  Another 
way  of  putting  it  is  to  say  that  each  perceptual  reflex  ends 
in  a  muscular  contraction  which  causes  a  thought-reflex,  and 
that  the  object  of  the  perception  and  the  indirect  object  of 
the  thought  are  the  same. 


The  sidelights  which  further  deductions  throw  on  the  whole 
process  of  consciousness  are  of  high  luminosities,  and  I  be- 
lieve that  what  they  show  is  fully  justified  by  observation. 
Upon  only  one  of  these  points  need  I  touch  in  the  present 
paper:  and  I  discuss  it  only  to  overcome  what  may  seem  an 
important  objection  to  the  hypothesis  as  developed  up  to  this 
point.  The  thought-consciousness  is  not  uniformly  of  both 
the  direct  object  and  the  indirect  object,  but  is  variable; 
sometimes  it  is  predominantly  of  the  direct  content,  some- 
times of  the  indirect  content.  This  variability  of  attention 
as  we  usually  designate  it,  is  without  doubt  due  to  variations 
in  the  relations  of  the  particular  arc  or  group  of  arcs 
in  question  to  the  totality  of  other  arcs  occurring  at  the 
same  time,  or  in  :riore  accurate  language,  to  the  other  parts 
of  the  total  arc-system.  This  conception  of  the  dependence 
of  what  Miinsterberg  has  called  vividness,  and  Titchener  has 
later  called  sensory  clearnesSy  on  the  interrelations  of  arcs 
is  not  new.  It  has  been  made  familiar  through  the  work 
of  W.  McDougall  in  particular.  This  factor  of  interrelations 
also  determines  the  formation  of  particular  arcs,  and  deter- 
mines which  of  several  branches  of  an  arc  a  particular  reflex 
shall  follow. 

Returning  now  to  our  chief  topic,  we  find  that  attention  to 
the  direct  content  of  thought  reveals  muscle  sensations  and 
only  muscle  sensations.  The  derivative  content  is  the  idea, 
and  is  in  itself  not  different  from  a  content  of  perceptual 
consciousness.  The  idea  is  of  course  a  variable  thing,  just 
as  the  object  of  perception  is  variable ;  now  this  aspect  being 
before  consciousness,  now  that  aspect.  The  chief  difference 
between  ideal  and  perceptual  content  is  that  the  idea  is  much 
more  variable  than  the  percept;  and  this  is  because  the  sys- 
tem of  muscular  contractions  is  exceedingly  complex,  and 
ever  recurs  in  constantly  varying  forms.  An  illustration  of 
the  extreme  complexity  of  the  image-contractions  is  found  in 
language:  a  word  as  perceived  kinaesthetically  is  the  sole 
direct  content  which  occurs  in  many  cases  of  thought,  and 


fflH 


36 


Images  and  Ideas 


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173] 


Knight  Dunlap 


37 


for  the  production  of  a  single  word  a  great  number  of  mus- 
cular activities  are  required. 

It  is  of  course  exceedingly  difficult  to  separate  completely 
in  introspection  the  direct  content  from  the  idea.     The  diffi- 
culty is  especially  great  if  we  do  not  understand  what  the 
direct  content  really  is.     Hence  we  need  not  be  puzzled  by 
the  fact  that  the  direct  content  has  been  described  in  con- 
ventional psychology  as  possessing  the  modality,  and  possibly 
other  characteristics,  of  the   idea.     For  example,   in  many 
cases  the  so-called  image  is  classed  as  visual  merely  because 
the  idea  it  controls  is  an  idea  which  is  primarily  visual,  or 
of  which  the  visual  features  have  been  chiefly  attended  to. 
Under  the  influence  of  this  tendency  alone,  persons  woukl 
be   distributed   in   types   strictly   in    accordance   with   their 
habits  of  attention.     But  there  is  probably  another  factor 
which  enters  to  make  the  determining  of  types  difficult  and 
variable.     The  images  are  operations  of  a  great  variety  of 
bodily  muscles.     The  muscles  of  the  face,  eye-ball?  and  vocal 
organs  participate  in  imagery  to  a  very  important  degree; 
the  muscles  of  the  arms  and  upper  part  of  the  trunk  have 
less  to  do,  and  the  image-functions  of  the  legs  are  perhaps 
still   less  important.     The  sexual  organs  sustain  a   certain 
amount  of  imaginative  activity  which,  when  it  occurs,  is  very 
definite.     The  muscles  of  the  organs  of  the  special  senses 
are  in  many  cases  concerned  in  "  imagery,''  and  there  is  a 
strong  tendency  in  these  cases  to  refer  the  image  to  the  mode 
of  the  special  sense  concerned.     If  the  muscles  of  the  eye 
are  involved  in  the  production  of  an  image,  there  is  a  ten- 
dency to  classify  the  "image"  as  visual,  and  so  on.     Un- 
questionably, the  use  of  the  vocal  organs  becomes  more  pro- 
nounced as  we  advance  in  age  and  education,  and  the  "  im- 
ages "  which  would  be  naively  classed  as  visual  and  auditory 
become  less   consequential.     Olfactory   "images''   ought  at 
all  times  to  be  infrequent,  since  the  muscles  involved  in  the 
act  of  smelling  are  not  specialized  to  that  function. 

Some  of  the  corollaries  of  the  theory  of  muscular  thought- 


content  are  highly  important.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
'•  imageless  "  thought,  though  it  is  easy  to  see  how  one  might 
find  no  "  images  "  when  looking  specifically  for  the  ghosts  of 
visual  or  auditory  sensations.  Probably  the  ferocious  Be- 
wussiseinslagen  and  other  monsters  discovered  by  the  Ger- 
mans may  be  discovered  to  be  nothing  but  general  muscular 
habits,  when  the  light  is  turned  on  them. 

The  doctrine  of  the  subconscious  also  receives  a  new  inter- 
pretation. In  many  cases  the  muscular  contractions  them- 
selves escape  consciousness.  Perhaps  this  is  the  general  rule 
when  we  are  thinking.  Doubtless  the  series  of  contractions 
can  go  on  at  times  without  arousing  thought  at  all.  In  that 
case,  the  final  arcs  of  the  series  may  rouse  consciousness  and 
bring  before  it  the  result  of  unconscious  reasoning  or  reflec- 
tion. This  seems  to  be  a  much  more  intelligible  scheme  than 
that  of  unconscious  cerebration. 

The  discussion  of  ideo-motor  action  must  come  to  a  stop 
for  want  of  a  topic.  The  apparent  sequence  of  action  upon 
thought  is  in  part  due  to  the  muscular  activity  involved  in 
the  reflex  which  conditions  the  thought,  and  in  part  to  the 
mechanical  sequence  of  the  homeodetic  arc-reflexes.  In  many 
cases,  that  is  to  say,  the  activity  which  is  supposed  to  be  the 
result  of  a  thought  is  merely  a  part  of  the  conditioning  pro- 
cess; in  other  cases  the  reflex  which  conditions  the  thought 
is  followed  by  another  reflex  terminating  in  an  appropriate 
action,  the  two  arcs  having  been  associatively  connected  in 
the  way  described  above. 

The  foregoing  discussion  is  perhaps  too  brief  to  be  clear, 
and  has  not  the  argument  and  the  exposition  sharply  dis- 
tinguished. It  will  therefore  help  to  prevent  misunderstand- 
ing if  I  add  a  still  briefer  but  more  explicit  recapitulation 
of  the  points  involved. 

1.  We  must  distinguish  sharply  between  consciousness  and 
content;  meaning  by  content  anything  which  can  he  known 
directly,  and  by  consciousness  the  direct  knowing  or  being 
aware  of  any  content.     This  distinction  is  important  because 


,iiii 


38 


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[17'i 


175] 


Knight  Dunlap 


39 


many  of  the  statements  made  above  involving  these  terms 
are  not  significant  if  *  consciousness '  be  taken  to  mean  some- 
thing else  {e.  g.,  taken  to  include  both  awareness  and  con- 
tent). 

2.  We  must  admit  the  fact  that  consciousness  has  a  cer- 
tain time-  and  space-transcending  character.  The  conscious- 
ness which  exists  (or  occurs)  at  the  present  moment  and 
here  (in  so  far  as  consciousness  can  be  dated  and  placed), 
may  have  as  content  something  wliich  is  neither  existent  in 
the  present  moment,  nor  spatially  included  in  nor  contiguous 
to  the  organism  to  which  the  consciousness  '  belongs.' 

3.  '  Mental  image '  psychology  attempts  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  we  apprehend  non-present  contents  by  assum- 
ing a  peculiar  sort  or  form  of  content  which  is  present,  and 
acts  as  intermediary  in  such  apprehension.     But,  since  these 

*  mental  images '  can  function  in  thought  only  in  so  far  as 
they  'mean'  or  'refer  to '  (literally,  carry  consciousness  over 
to)  the  'absent'  content,  this  psychology  virtually  admits 
the  time-  and  space-transcending  nature  of  consciousness. 

4.  The  '  mental  image '  theory  is  logically  a  failure,  since 
it  does  not  accomplish  the  specific  purpose  for  which  it  ap- 
parently has  been  needed.  As  a  thought-mechanism,  the 
'  mental-image '  is  superfluous,  because  consciousness  must, 
even  if  it  apprehends  a  'mental  image,'  apprehend  never- 
theless the  object  to  which  the  '  mental  image  '  refers.  The 
doctrine  of  '  mental  images '  does  not  in  the  least  explain  how 
consciousness  can  be  of  an  absent  object. 

5.  Upon  analysis  of  his  thought-content,  and  the  con- 
tent of  the  consciousness  concomitant  with  thought,  the  wTi- 
ter  is  unable  to  find  any  'mental  images.'  This  negative 
finding  does  not  prove  that  there  are  no  such  images,  even 
in  the  writer's  content;  but  taken  in  connection  with  the 
superfluity  of  the  'mental  image'  (as  set  forth  in  the  pre- 
ceding paragraph),  it  makes  it  unreasonable  to  assume  any 
such  content-factor.     In  order  to  justify  the  assumption  of 

*  mental  imagery'  it  would  be  necessary  to  show  either  (1) 


that  such  factors  are  actually  discoverable,  or  else  (2)  that 
the  assumption  is  of  assistance  in  explaining  some  pheno- 
menon w^hose  occurrence  is  admitted. 

6.  Other  observers  do  report  'mental  images.'  I  find 
introspectively  that  in  many  cases  l  am  conscious  of  certain 
present  content-items  while  thinking,  namely  muscular  con- 
tractions, w^hich  seem  regularly  concomitant  to  the  thought 
processes  with  which  they  occur.  This  discovery  leads  me  to 
form  the  working  hypothesis  that  muscular  activity  is  in- 
volved in  the  conditions  of  all  thought,  and  the  further  and 
supplementary  hypothesis  that  this  form  of  present  content 
(muscular  activity)  is  that  which  is  actually  observed  by  those 
who  report '  mental  images.'  These  observers  correctly  notice 
that  there  is  a  present  content  in  addition  to  the  'absent' 
or  ultimate  object  of  thought,  but  they  mistakenly  confuse 
the  quality  of  the  ultimate  object  with  the  quality  of  the 

present  content. 

7.  The  hypothesis  of  uniform  muscular  conditions  for  the 
thought  processes  must  be  tested,  not  only  by  appeal  to  data 
of  observation,  but  also  by  determining  its  congruity,  or  in- 
congruity, with  other  hypotheses,  psychological  and  physio- 
logical, which  are  accepted  unconditionally  or  provisionally. 

8.  The  most  important  hypothesis  to  be  considered  in  the 
connection  just  mentioned  ds  the  modern  reflex-arc  hy- 
pothesis. This  hypothesis  involves  the  proposition  that  all 
consciousness-processes  end  in  activity  of  effectors  (muscles 
and  glands).  When  we  attempt  to  apply  this  hypothesis  to 
the  specific  case  of  association  between  successive  awarenesses 
(or  states  of  consciousness),  we  find  the  only  scheme  possible 
includes  as  essential  that  which  we  have  tentatively  assumed, 
namely,  muscle  activity  as  the  initiation  of  the  thought  pro- 
cess. We  find  also,  that  the  particular  muscle  activity  in- 
volved as  the  condition  of  the  thought  of  a  certain  object  is 
also  involved  in  the  process  conditioning  the  perception  of 

the  same  object. 

9.  So  far  as  we  are  able  to  go,  therefore,  we  find  nothing 


4. 


'^ 


40 


Images  and  Ideas 


[176 


but  confirmation  of  our  working  hypothesis,  namely,  that 
there  is  no  present  content  in  (or  accompanying)  thought, 
except  muscular  activity,  which,  as  perceived  through  the  so- 
called  "  muscle-sense,"  is  designated  as  "  muscular  sensation." 
Let  it  be  understood  that  this  hypothesis  makes  no  attempt 
to  explain  how  physiological  activity  makes  thought  or  any 
other  form  of  consciousness  possible.  It  accepts  the  fact  that 
thought  occurs  and  the  fact  that  its  occurrence  is  conditioned 
by  physiological  activity,  and  is  directed  simply  towards  the 
empirical  analysis  of  this  condition. 

The  scheme  outlined  above  has  certain  agreements  with 
behaviorism,  but  also  differs  sharply  from  the  latter  hy- 
pothesis. Behaviorism  insists  that  behavior  (muscular  and 
glandular)  is  to  be  studied  for  its  own  sake,  and  that  its 
connection  with  any  possible  consciousness  is  strictly  to  be 
ignored.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  am  interested  in  organic 
behavior  only  in  so  far  as  it  may  legitimately  be  inferred  to 
be  a  condition,  or  a  part  of  the  condition  or  conditions,  of 
consciousness  (in  the  sense  which  I  have  defined).  Speci- 
fically: behaviorism  insists  that  muscular  activity  is  that 
which  has  usually  been  called  thought.  I  insist  that  for 
psychology  thought  is  thought,  and  the  muscular  activity  is 
its  essential  condition.  Methodologically,  again,  there  is  an 
important  difference  between  my  position  and  behaviorism. 
The  latter  theory  practically  restricts  the  means  of  psycholo- 
gical observation  to  the  special  senses,  and  principally  to 
vision.  Behavior  is  studied  chiefly  in  so  far  as  it  is  seen, 
or  its  graphic  registration  seen,  though  the  audible  and  tan- 
gible aspects  are  included  in  the  study  to  a  lesser  extent,  and 
the  olfactory  and  gustatory  aspects  might  be.  The  muscle- 
sense,  however,  is  absolutely  ruled  out, — a  discrimination 
which  seems  quite  unjust  to  this  sense.  Behaviorism  admits 
no  introspection,  and  the  observation  of  muscle  sensations  is 
of  course  introspection,  in  any  current  sense  of  that  term.  I 
am  inclined  to  go  to  the  other  extreme,  and  to  say  that  the 
most  valuable  observation  of  muscular  activity  is  through  the 


177] 


Knight  Dunlap 


41 


muscle  sense,  and  to  add  (although  without  direct  bearing 
on  the  present  discussion)  that  the  direct  observation  of  such 
feelings  as  pleasure,  desire,  etc.,  will  always  be  psychologically 
of  prime  importance,  however  much  we  may  find  out  about 
the  physiology  of  smooth  muscle  and  gland. 

A  final  word  about  introspection  is  relevant,  since  I  have 
above  committed  myself  to  a  certain  use  of  the  term,  although 
I  have  in  earlier  papers  objected  strongly  to  the  conventional 
conception  of  introspection.  Introspection,  in  so  far  as  the 
term  has  any  validity  and  usefulness  in  psychology,  is  the 
consciousness  of  muscular  sensations  and  of  the  affective  and 
conative  factors  which  we  usually  class  as  '  feelings.'  It  is 
the  observation  of,  or  immediate  attention  to  those  objects 
which  have  an  existence  inside  the  body,  and  those  others 
which  have  possibly  no  spatial  location  at  all.  Introspection, 
considered  as  a  turning  of  the  consciousness  upon  itself,  if 
such  a  mental  feat  be  possible,  is  something  with  which  the 
psychologist  has  no  concern.  What  has  passed,  in  psycho- 
logical work,  for  such  mental  gymnastics  has  been  in  the  best 
instances  just  such  introspection  as  I  have  described ;  and  in 
other  instances  a  confused  observation  of  external  objects. 

Introspection,  properly  understood,  may  yet  be  of  great 
value,  perhaps  of  essential  value,  to  psychology.  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  '  thought  process '  or  the  '  feeling  process ' 
can  ever  be  adequately  studied  by  visual  means,  or  by  indirect 
registration ;  that  is,  as  mere  '  behavior.'  Immediate  obser^ 
vation  through  the  muscle-sense  is  necessary.  At  any  rate, 
I  hope  to  see  introspection  given  a  fair  trial,  and  not  con- 
demned incontinently  because  of  the  barrenness  of  its  mis- 
tmderstood  past. 


/^ 


^  trt^^ 


42 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[178 


ON  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  IDEAS 

Bv  Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 

Professor  of  Philosophy. 


The  rumor  has  by  this  time  perhaps  begun  to  spread  even 
beyond  academic  walls  that  many  philosophers  have  of  lata 
been  treating  with  strange  harshness  and  contumely  certain 
venerable  entities  which  were  once  the  objects  of  an  almost 
universal  piety.  '  Consciousness/  for  example^,  which  for- 
merly, more  than  any  other  philosophical  conception,  was 
invested  with  awe  and  majesty,  now  often  presents  the  ap- 
pearance of  a  King  Lear  of  metaphysics.  The  most  widely 
read  and  most  thought-provoking  of  recent  American  phi- 
losophers raised,  it  is  now  ten  years  since,  the  startling  ques- 
tion :  "  Does  consciousness  exist  ?  "  And  though  he  did  not 
answer  it  with  an  entirely  unequivocal  negative,  he  quite 
plainly  proposed  that  from  this  once-ruling  category  should 
be  taken  most  of  the  dignities  and  the  powers  which  custom 
had  hitherto  assigned  to  it.  Since  then,  it  is  well  known,  it 
has  become  the  fashion  with  not  a  few  philosophers  to  de- 
scribe *  consciousness  '  as  a  ^  merely  external  relation  ' ;  and 
there  are  in  the  philosophical  vocabulary  few  more  disrespect- 
ful epithets  than  this.  The  fate  of  *  consciousness  '  has  been 
shared  by  several  other  ancient  notions  which  once  made  up 
its  retinue.  The  existence  of  sensations,  of  images,  of  ideas, 
of  mental  states,  of  '  subjective  appearances,'  and  the  possi- 
bility of  '  introspection,'  have  been  denied  by  recent  phi- 
losophical and  psychological  iconoclasts. 

In  the  following  pages  I  shall  attempt  to  analyze  the  mean- 
ing of  certain  of  these  new  uprisings  against  old-established 
assumptions  of  philosophy,  to  determine  their  logical  motives, 
and  to  examine  into  the  validity  of  the  arguments  which 
have  been  offered  in  justification  of  them.     The  temper  oi 


179] 


Arthur  0,  Lovejoy 


43 


the  inquiry,  it  may  as  well  be  acknowledged  from  the  outset, 
will  be  a  sceptical  one.  With  the  best  will  in  the  vv'orld  to 
be,  as  the  French  say,  dans  le  mouvement,  I  have  not  yet 
been  able  to  see  that  the  leaders  of  the  insurrection  have 
established  their  charges  of  usurpation  against  all  of  the 
older  conceptions  which  they  attack.  The  charges,  however, 
are  clearly  important,  if  just;  and  they  merit  careful  scru- 
tiny. Much  that  is  here  to  be  said,  by  way  of  exposition  and 
criticism  of  them,  can  make  no  pretension  to  novelty;  some 
of  it  has  been  said  before  by  the  present  writer.  But  it  has 
seemed  worth  while  to  review  the  whole  situation  in  a  some- 
what  more  connected  and  methodical  fashion  than  hitherto, 
and  to  present  in  a  manner  which  may  perhaps  be  intelli- 
gible to  the  non-philosophical  reader  the  various  aspects  of 
a  discussion  which  has  thus  far  been  carried  on,  for  the  most 
part,  through  a  multitude  of  controversial  papers  in  the 
technical  journals. 

It  will  serve  to  clear  the  stage  for  the  real  issue  if  I  con- 
cede at  once  that,  in  a  certain  sense  of  the  term,  the  case 
against  ^  consciousness '  has  been  made  out.  It  is  evidently 
believed  by  many  people,  and  it  has  been  and  sometimes  still 
is  asserted  by  philosophers,  that  at  those  moments  when  we 
are  conscious,  consciousness  itself  is  one  of  the  things  that  we 
are  immediately  conscious  of;  that  in  being  aware  of  objects 
we  are  also  aware  of  consciousness  as  a  process,  as  a  kind  of 
'•  impalpable  inner  flow."  Our  perceptual  experience,  in 
other  words,  is  held  to  be  of  "an  essentially  dualistic  con- 
stitution," and  this  duality  is  supposed  to  be  directly  given 
in  the  experience  itself.  People,  as  Professor  James  has  said, 
declare :  "  We  feel  our  thought,  flowing  as  a  life  within  ud 
in  absolute  contrast  with  the  objects  which  it  so  unremit- 
tingly escorts.  We  cannot  be  faithless  to  this  immediate  in- 
tuition. The  dualism  is  a  fundamental  datum.''  The  exist- 
ence of  this  kind  of  ^  consciousness '  James  in  his  later  years 
flatly  denied.  "Experience,"  he  maintained,  "has  no  such 
inner  duplicity  " ;  and  the  separation  of  it  into  consciousness 


44 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[180 


and  content  comes  not  by  way  of  analysis  but  by  way  of 
addition.  What  is  present  when  we  perceive  is  perceived 
content— along,  of  course,  with  feelings  and  conations  which 
are  not  essentially  different  from  perceived  content;  beyond 
this,  introspection  discloses  no  further  given  element.  That 
it  has  been  supposed  to  do  so  is  due  imperfect  analysis,  and 
to  the  assignment  of  a  special  and  impressive  name  to  the 
faultily  analyzed  part  of  the  moment's  content.  "  Let  the 
case  be  what  it  may  with  others,"  said  James,  "  I  am  as  con- 
fident as  I  am  of  anything  that,  in  myself,  the  stream  of 
thinking  (which  I  recognize  emphatically  as  a  phenomenon) 
is  only  a  careless  name  for  what,  when  scrutinized,  reveals 
itself  to  consist  chiefly  of  the  stream  of  my  breathing." 
''  Breath,  which  was  ever  the  original  of  '  spirit,'  breath  mov- 
ing outwards  between  the  glottis  and  the  nostrils,  is,  I  am 
persuaded,  the  essence  out  of  which  philosophers  have  con- 
structed the  entity  known  to  them  as  consciousness."  ' 

From  this  denial  of  the  inner  duality  of  our  experience  as 
it  is  immediately  given,  I  do  not  find  reason  for  dissenting. 
A  '  consciousness '  clearly  contrasted  with  '  content '  is  not, 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  a  thing  of  which  I  am  primarily  and 
intuitively  conscious  when  I  perceive  or  think.  The  ques- 
tion is  scarcely  one  for  argument ;  each  man  can  only  reporc 
his  own  introspective  findings  upon  the  matter  at  issue.  But 
my  own  reading  of  the  facts,  so  far  as  James's  main  nega- 
tion is  concerned,  agrees  with  his.  If  consciousness  is  after 
all  to  be  recognized  as  a  fact,  and  as  a  factor  in  the  phe- 
nomenon called  perception,  it  must  be  an  inferred  fact;  its 
reality,  and  its  distinction  from  whatever  is  regarded  as  its 
proper  antithesis,  must,  if  at  all,  be  established  through  a 
reflective  interpretation  of  the  immediate  data  of  perception, 
not  read  of!  as  an  actual  part  of  those  data.  Our  criticism 
of  the  theories  which  reject  or  belittle  the  notion  of  con- 
sciousness can  not,  therefore,  be  so  short  and  easy  as  might 


^  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  p.  37. 


181] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


45 


be  offered  by  those  who  fancy  that  the  whole  matter  may 
be  at  once  settled  by  an  appeal  to  the  direct  testimony  of 
consciousness  about  itself. 

Clearly,  however,  there  is  no  legitimate  inference  from  the 
fact  that  consciousness  does  not  exist  as  an  observable  item 
amongst  the  objects  of  perception,  to  the  conclusion  that  it 
does  not  exist  at  all;  nor  to  the  conclusion  that  objects  may 
not  be  "in'  consciousness;  nor  yet  to  the  conclusion  that 
there  are  objects  which  exist  outside  of  it  and  without  de- 
pendence upon  it.     That  a  given  object  is,  by  any  individ- 
ual observer,  sometimes  perceived  and  sometimes  not  per- 
ceived, is  at  one  moment  thought  of  and  at  anotlier  mo- 
ment not  thought  of,— this,  at  least,  is  a  truth  of  every-day 
experience  which  no  one,  I  suppose,  denies.     When  I  wake  in 
the  morning  and  begin  to  perceive  the  objects  in  my  room, 
something,  assuredly,  has  befallen  those  objects.     And  the 
familiar  and  convenient  way  of  describing  what  has  befallen 
them  is  to  say  that,  while  before  I  awoke  they  were  not, 
they  now  are,  *^  in '  my  consciousness.     But  since  conscious- 
ness is  something  which  objects  can  truly  be  in,  it  evidently 
must  be  some  sort  of  existent.     It  may  be  merely  a  relation 
or  a  context  or  a  "unique  and  not  further  analyzable  to- 
getherness"; but  whatever  else  it  is,  it  is  a  somewhat  in 
which  certain  content  is  at  times  present  and  from  which  it 
is  at  other  times  absent.     The  real  issue,  therefore,  cannot 
be  the  question  as  to  the  existence  of  consciousness  (in  this 
broad  sense)  ;  it  must  rather  be  the  question  as  to  its  nature 
—the  question  what  it  is  that  really  happens  when  an  object 
comes  to  be  perceived.     Accordingly,  even  the  most  radical  of 
those  engaged  in  revising  our  conceptions  upon  these  matters 
do  not  dispense  with  the  notion  of  consciousness,  in  the  sense 
just  indicated,  though  they  occasionally  manifest  a  somewhat 
superstitious  aversion  from  the  use  of  the  term.     They  know 
as  well  as  any  one  that  the  necessary  starting-point  of  all 
reasoning  on  this  subject  is  the  fact  that  there  exist  distinct 
complexes  or  systems  called  individual  consciousnesses,  into 


46 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[182 


183] 


Arthur  0.  Love  joy 


47 


which  objects  pass  and  from  which  they  lapse.  The  problem 
of  the  new  theorists  is  merely  that  of  describing  what  is  given 
in,  and  what  is  implied  by,  this  transaction. 

The  chief  contention  of  these  theorists  may  be  said  to  offer, 
primarily,  an  answer  to  a  particular  question  which  forms  a 
part  of  this  general  problem — the  question:  What  is  it  that 
is  '  in  consciousness,'  at  any  moment  when  a  given  object  is 
actually  perceived  by  someone?  And  their  answer,  in  plain 
terms — an  expression  it  should  be  remarked,  which  usually 
means  seemingly  clear,  but  really  obscure,  terms — is  that  it  is 
always  actual  things,  and  never  thoughts,  ideas,  images,  or 
sensations  of  things,  that  enter  into  consciousness  and  make 
up  its  so-called  '  content.'  What  this  distinction  between 
'  things '  and  ^  thoughts '  signifies,  it  will  be  necessary  to  in- 
quire more  fully  later;  for  the  present  it  may  suffice  to  say 
that  the  answer  given  implies  that  there  exists  no  unique 
class  of  entities  called  ^  thoughts '  or  '  images,'  generically 
distinct  from  things,  having  a  purely  '  mental '  character, 
and  constituting  the  immediate  data  of  consciousness.  But 
this  account  of  the  character  of  the  content  of  conscious- 
ness evidently  implies,  also,  a  certain  negative  answ^er  to 
the  question  concerning  the  nature  of  that  which  this 
content  is  '  in,' — in  other  words,  concerning  the  nature  of 
consciousness  itself.  It  implies,  namely,  that  conscious- 
ness is  the  sort  of  thing  which  is  incapable  of  having  any 
special  kind  of  content  of  its  own;  that — to  put  it  para- 
doxically— almost  everything  may  be  said,  at  one  time  or 
another,  to  be  'in  the  mind,'  except  ideas. 

It  is,  then,  the  existence  of  a  supposed  species  of  entities 
called  '  images '  or  '  ideas  '  or  '  mental  representations  '  or 
^  subjective  content,'  not  the  existence  of  consciousness  as 
such,  that  the  new  theories  deny.  What  we  are  witnessing  is 
a  rebellion  against  an  assumption  which,  in  spite  of  some 
struggles  against  it  on  the  part  of  the  Scotch  school,  has  long 
been  dominant  in  philosophy,  and  has  much  colored  both  the 
thought  and  the  terminolog}^  of  the  man  of  science,  and  even. 


of  the  plain  man,  especially  since  the  seventeenth  century. 
Indeed,  the  new  movement  may  be  said  to  be  a  demand  for  a 
rejection  of  a  certain  belief  which  seventeenth-century  philos- 
ophy had  been  supposed  to  have  definitively  established: 
while  the  general  contention  of  the  critics  of  the  movement 
is  simply  that  its  partisans  have  failed  to  see  the  force  of 
the  reasons  which  long  since  led  reflective  men  to  that  belief 
— have  failed  to  profit  duly  by  the  past  history  of  thought,] 
and  are  in  reality  proposing  a  reversion  to  a  primitive  and' 
uncritical  way  of  thinking  from  which  mankind  seemed, 
nearly  three  hundred  years  ago — and,  in  part,  many  centuries 
earlier  still — to  have  escaped.  The  whole  controversy,  there- 
fore, is  simply  a  harking  back  to  an  earlier  juncture  in 
philosophy,  a  reexamination  of  an  opinion  which  received  its 
classic  formulations  at  the  hands  of  certain  seventeenth- 
century  writers. 

The  most  familiar  of  these  formulations  is  to  be  found  in 
some  sentences  of  John  Locke's.  "It  is  evident,"  he  wrote, 
'•'that  the  mind  knows  not  things  immediately,  but  by  the 
intervention  of  the  ideas  it  has  of  them."  And  again :  "  The 
mind,  in  all  its  thoughts  and  reasonings,  hath  no  other  im- 
mediate object  but  its  own  ideas,  which  it  alone  does  or  can 
contemplate."  This  belief,  that  there  are  '  ideas '  and  that 
it  is  to  them  only  that  we  have  direct  access,  has  been  a  deci- 
sive factor  in  a  great  part  of  the  philosophy  between  Locke'^ 
day  and  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  gave  rise  to 
the  idealistic  doctrines  of  the  century  following  Locke's — 
directly  to  those  of  Berkeley  and  Collier,  by  more  indirect 
and  complicated  processes  to  that  of  Kant.  And  it  brought 
it  about  that  much  subsequent  realism  was,  like  Locke's  own, 
of  the  dualistic  sort — a  realism  which  acknowledged  the  ex- 
istence of  two  realms  of  being,  things  and  thoughts,  and  sup- 
posed the  latter  to  be  somehow,  and  in  some  measure,  coun- 
terparts or  pictures  of  the  former.  To  how  recent  a  time 
the  same  assumption  still  ruled  in  philosophy  may  be  judged 
from  a  remark  in  a  book  published  in  1903  by  an  American 


48 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[184 


writer   thoroughly    at   home   in   contemporary   discussions: 
"The  doctrine  that  material  objects  exist    [primarily]    .is 
modifications  of  the  mind  ...  is  all  but  universally  accepted 
by  philosophers.     Few  who  deserve  the  name  imagine  that  m 
perceiving  material  objects  we  have  immediately  to  do  with 
anything  but  our  own  mental  states."     Ten  years  have  sin- 
gularly changed  all  tliat;  and  such  a  reiiuuk  if  made  now 
by  any  philosopher  would  assuredly  be  very  ill  received  by 
large  numbers  of  his  professional   brethren.     The   change, 
indeed,  became  conspicuous  in  the  next  year  after  that  in 
which  Professor   Strong  expressed  himself  in  the  manner' 
I  have  quoted;  it  was  in  1904  that  several  American  philoso- 
phers well  deserving  the  name— James,  Perry,  Woodbridge— 
began  preaching  the  crusade  against  the  prevalent  conception 
of°consciousness.     In  this  crusade  several  otherwise  distinct 
philosophical  groups  are  by  this  time  heartily  united.     Not 
only  the  so-called  '  new  realists '  in  America,  and  several  other 
American  philosophers  of  distinction  who  do  not  so  label 
themselves,  but  also  the  most  interesting  recent  school  of 
English  realism— that  best  represented  by  Professor  S.  Alex- 
ander of   Manchester— have  joined   forces   in   this  "revolt 
against  the  tyranny  of  images,"  as  Alexander  has  called  it. 
There  is,  indeed,  for  this  last-mentioned  writer,  a  class  of 
existents'which  may  properly  be  called  mental  or  subjective; 
but  it  includes  only  conations  and  feelings.     They  and  they 
alone  are  "  the  stuff  of  which  mind  is  made."     But  what  are 
called   representations   are   not   mental   states   but   physical 
things.     "  We  may,"  Alexander  concedes,  "  call  physical  ob- 
jects ideas  in  order  to  indicate  that  they  are  related  to  the 
mind  so  far  as  we  know  them.     But  let  us  not  substitute 
fiction  for  facts  by  supposing  that  a  physical  object,  because 
it  is  related  to  a  mental  process,  gives  rise  to  an  idea  of 
itself  which  is  not  physical  but  mental."  ^  As  another  English 
writer,  Mr.  Percy  Nunn,  has  put  the  doctrine,  emphasizing 


'  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society,  ix,  1908-9,  p.  2. 


185] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


49 


the  positive  and  realistic  obverse  of  the  denial  of  the  existence 
of  ideas :  "  sensational  experience  of  whatever  sort  carries 
with  it  the  guarantee  of  the  extra-mentality  of  its  object." 
This,  it  should  be  understood,  is  to  be  taken  literally;  it  is 
the  extra-mentality,  not  of  things  corresponding  to  the  con- 
tent, but  of  the  content  itself,  that  is  affirmed. 

The  American  and  English  innovating  doctrines  thus  far 
mentioned  have  all  been  associated  with,  and  instrumental 
to,  that  revival  of  realism  which  has  been  so  conspicuous  a 
tendency  in  recent  Anglo-American  philosophy.  It  is  worth 
mentioning  that — however  paradoxical  the  fact  may  seem — 
a  similar  denial  of  the  '  subjective  ^  or  '  mental '  character  of 
the  content  of  (at  least)  normal  perception  made  its  ap- 
pearance much  earlier  in  German  philosophy  as  one  of  the 
many  forms  in  which  neo-Kantian  idealism  has  worked  itself 
out.  The  immanente  Philosophie  which  Wilhelm  Schuppe, 
Professor  at  Greifswald,  has  for  more  than  thirty  years  been 
expounding  and  elaborating,  has  been  sometimes  described  by 
its  author  as  "  a  corroboration  of  naive  realism,"  at  least  in 
so  far  as  naive  realism  '-epudiates  the  Lockian  duality  of 
mental  representations  and  objective  realities.  Idealistic  the 
"  philosophy  of  immanence "  is,  in  the  sense  that  it  asserts 
that  the  only  reality  of  which  we  can  have  any  knowledge  or 
form  any  conception  involves  the  relation  of  an  object  to 
a  subject,  of  things  to  an  Ego.  To  be,  or  at  all  events  to  be 
knowable,  is  to  be  ^  for '  a  self.  But  this,  Schuppe  insists, 
in  no  wise  implies  that  the  contents  of  sensation  and  per- 
ception are  mental,  are  *  in '  my  individual  consciousness  or 
dependent  upon  it.  Though  object  and  subject  must  always 
be  co-present  in  a  bi-polar  relation,  the  former  is  no  more 
in  the  latter  than  the  latter  is  in  the  former ;  on  the  contrary, 
the  doctrine  of  their  necessary  conjunction,  their  notwendige 
Zusammengehorigkeit,  especially  emphasizes  their  distinct- 
'  ness  from  one  another  and  their  reciprocal  externality.  And 
if  it  be  urged  that  all  the  contents  of  the  complex  constituted 
by  the  correlation  of  these  two  terms  must  still  be  admitted 


/ 


50 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[186 


by  Schuppe  to  be  '  in  consciousness/  if  one  means  by  con- 
sciousness precisely  this  complex  itself,  he  replies  that  this 
is  true  only  of  Bewusstsein  uherliaupt,  not  of  individual  con- 
sciousnesses.    For  the  self  '  to '  which  anything  that  is  said 
to  be  must  be  '  given/  is  not  an  individual  self,  but  is  merely, 
as  it  were,  a  common  point  of  reference  for  all  content. 
What  is  commonly  called  my  private  self  is  not  a  separate 
center  of  this  sort,  but  is  merely  a  series  of  particular,  limited 
masses  of  content,  in  which  my  body  has  an  especially  con- 
stant and  important  place.     My  sensations  and  perceptions 
consist,  therefore,  merely  of  certain  of  the  things  in  space 
which  constitute  the  objective  end  of  the  universal  subject- 
object  relation;  they  do  not  consist  of  iutra-mental  images 
{innerseelische  Gehilde)   of  those  things.     When  an  object 
comes  to  be  perceived  by  me  it  undergoes,  says  Schuppe,  no 
'■duplication,"   and  does  not  need  ''to  be   volatilized   into 
an  idea."    And  when  it  ceases  to  be  perceived  it  does  not  lapse 
into  nonentity;  for  "its  existence  is  palpably  independent 
of  every  individual  percipient  Ego."* 

The  occurrence  of  the  same  reaction  against  the  belief  in 
subjective  sensations  and  ideas,  which  we  have  noted  in  the 
new  realistic  movements,  in  a  school  of  Kantian  antecedents 
and  of  idealistic  affiliations,  is  striking  evidence  of  the  exist- 
ence of  some  powerful  natural  impulsion  in  contemporary 
thought  towards  the  conclusion  here  under  discussion.  And 
the  adherents  of  the  idealistic  form  of  the  "  relational  theory 
of  consciousness  "  like  the  protagonists  of  the  realistic  ver- 
sion of  it,  are  wont  to  speak  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm 
of  the  magnitude  and  the  beneficence  of  the  reforms  which 
their  new  way  of  thinking  is  to  introduce  into  philosophy. 
Thus  a  writer  in  the  first  volume  of  an  important  "  Encyclo- 
paedia of  the  Philosophical  Sciences  "  now  in  process  of  pub- 
lication, treating  of  "the  transformation  of  the  concept  of 


'Schuppe,  Griindriss  der  Erk€nniniMh<;orie  und  LogiJc,   1910,  pp. 
16-35  passim. 


187] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


51 


consciousness  in  modern  epistemology,"  declares  that  the 
view  expressed  by  Schuppe,  and  after  him  by  others,  "  seems 
likely  to  lead  philosophy  along  entirely  new  paths  .... 
A  philosophy  which  starts  from  this  conception  is  much  more 
supple;  innumerable  new  possibilities  open  before  it.  In 
proof  of  this  we  may  point  out  that  it  has  already,  with  a 
single  blow,  freed  itself  both  from  solipsism  and  from  the 
necessity  of  denying  the  existence  of  matter  or  of  violently 
transmuting  it  into  a  complex  of  psychical  processes."  The 
new  interpretation  of  what  '  being-in-consciousness '  means  is 
at  last  showing  philosophy  a  way  of  escape  from  "the  cul- 
de-sac  of  psychological  idealism,"  yet  without  leading  it  into 
a  mechanistic  materialism.* 

It  is  obvious  that  there  are  three  possible  types  of  view 
with  respect  to  the  existence  of  ideas — to  continue  to  use  the 
word,  for  brevity's  sake,  in  Locke's  wide  and  loose  sense.  It 
may,  namely,  be  held: 

1.  That  all  the  immediate  content  of  perception  is  mental, 
and  consists  of  ideas;  or 

2.  That  some  of  it  is  mental  and  some  physical,  i,  e.,  that 
some  contents  are  ideas  and  some  are  things ;  or 

3.  That  there  are  no  ideas,  and  that  all  perceptual  con- 
tent is  objective  and  physical. 

The  second  view  is  that  taken  by  Schuppe.  It  is  only  the 
things  which  can  be  fitted  into  a  single  spatial  system  and 
can  be  verified  by  more  than  one  percipient,  that  are  held  by 
him  to  be  external  to  and  independent  of  individual  con- 
sciousness. In  other  words,  what  is  called  non-veridical  con- 
tent is  composed  of  ideas ;  it  "  depends  upon  the  physical  or 
psychical  peculiarities  of  the  individual  and  must  be  regarded 
as  a  subjective  modification."  The  same  way  of  dealing  with 
illusory  appearances  has  been  adopted  by  at  least  one  recent 

*Losskij    in   Encyclopaedia  of   the   Philosophical   Sciences,   i,   pp. 
243,242.  ^ 


52 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[188 


English  realist,  Mr.  A.  Wolf.    The  doctrine  of  the  literal 
identity  of  perceived  content  and  real  object-which  he  calls 
"real    presentationism"-he    regards    as    a    wholly    satis- 
factory theory  of  normal  perception;  but  of  imagination  and 
memory   and   perceptual   error  he   thinks   that   an   entirely 
different  account  must  be  given.     "  In  normal  perception  the 
mental  process  is  transparent,  while  the  content  consists  of 
the  presented  physical  object;  in  imagination  both  process 
and  content  are  mental,  though  the  content  is  also  represen- 
tative of  something  physical   (actual  or  supposed).  -     i  do 
not  mean  to  in(iuire  here  whether  this  second  of  the  three 
possible  views  is  or  is  not  a  weak  and  untenable  compromise 
between  the  two  more  extreme  doctrines.     I  mention  it  only 
for  the  purpose  of  distinguishing  it  expressly  from  the  view 
with  which  in  this  paper  I  shall  hereafter  exclusively  be 
concerned— the  view  that  no  such  things  as  sensations  or 
ideas,  as  non-physical  entities,  exist  at  all. 

In  order  to  render  unmistakable  the  meaning  of  this  doc- 
trine I  now  proceed,  even  at  the  risk  of  some  iteration,  to 
make'  explicit  its  implications  with  respect  to  the  several  dis- 
tinct classes  of  perceptual  content  of  which  we  have  experi- 

GncG. 

(a)  The  simplest  case  is,  of  course,  that  in  which  its  impli- 
cations and  those  of  the  second  view  are  identical— namely, 
veridical  perception.     Let  it  be  supposed,  as  the  realist  sup- 
poses,  that   there   exists   a   material   object   independent   of 
consciousness,  occupying,  at  a  given  moment,  a  definite  space 
havin-  definite  magnitude  and  a  distinctive  set  of  physical 
qualities;  then,  according  to  the  theory  in  question,  what 
'  enters  consciousness '  is  just  this  actual,  simultaneously  ex- 
isting object-not  a  substitute  for  it.     In  other  words,  the 
theory  in  this  case  amounts  to  an  affirmation  of  ^epistemo- 
logican  monism '  and  a  rejection  of  the  Lockian  sort  of  dual- 
ism.    In  order  to  be  '  in  consciousness '  the  object  does  not 


^Proc.  Ar.  Soc,  ix,  1908-9,  p.  163. 


189] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


53 


need  to  undergo  translation  or  sublimation  into  some  more 
impalpable  mental  equivalent.  K'ot  all  of  the  object,  it  is  true, 
nor  all  of  its  attributes,  enter  consciousness  at  any  one  time. 
Consciousness  is  admittedly  selective;  it  takes  in  only  a  part 
of  the  world  of  real  objects.  But  what  it  takes  in,  it  takes  ia 
directly.  Such  is  the  account  of  true  perception  given  by  the 
new  theory.  And  since  this  account  agrees  with  what  com- 
mon sense  has  always,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Locke  and  all  the 
philosophers,  been  much  inclined  to  believe  about  the  matter 
in  question,  the  theory  is  likely  to  strike  the  plain  man  as 
more  distinguished,  so  far,  by  its  plausibility  than  by  its 
novelty.  It  may  be  new  to  latter-day  philosophy,  but  it  is 
scarcely  new  to  the  human  mijid.  At  the  moment  of  actual 
perception  even  the  dualistic  philosopher  doubtless  find*s  some 
difficulty  in  always  thinking  that  he  has  before  him,  not 
objects,  but  only  doubles  of  objects. 

If  all  our  perceptions  were  veridical,  the  supposition  that 
there  exist  ideas  or  mental  percepts  of  objects,  in  addition 
to  the  objects  themselves,  might,  at  first  thought,  very  imtur- 
ally  be  deemed  superfluous.  The  existence  of  the  objects 
being  assumed  and  the  content  that  is  in  consciousness  being 
found  to  have  in  all  particulars  the  qualities  of  those  objects, 
the  natural  inference  might  appear  to  be  that  the  content 
consists  of  the  objects.  To  assert  a  duality  of  existence 
where  there  is  a  complete  identity  of  attributes  would  seem 
to  violate  the  rule  against  multiplying  entities  beyond  neces- 
sity. There  is,  however,  one  familiar  consideration  which, 
even  if  we  had  no  reason  to  doubt  that  we  always  perceive 
things  exactly  as  they  are,  would  yet  establish  a  presumption 
against  the  numerical  identity  of  the  assumed  physical  object 
with  the  content  of  consciousness.  This  is  the  fact  that  our 
perceptions  are  known  to  be  metiiated  through,  and  condi- 
tioned by,  extremely  complicated  physical  processes,  both 
without  and  within  our  bodies.  In  distance-perception,  such 
as  vision,  for  example,  the  object,  and  the  nervous  system 
upon  the  functioning  of  which  the  occurrence  of  a  perception 


54 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[190 


191] 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


55 


of  that  object  absolutely  depends,  occupy  different  positions 
in  space;  and  the  object  can,  so  to  say,  report  ^present'  to 
consciousness  only  through  a  long  series  of  intermediaries. 
Before  I  can  see  the  blue  in  the  picture  upon  yonder  wall, 
the  color— or  rather,  not  the  color  itself,  but  the  motions  of 
the  molecules  or  electrons  of  which  the  picture  is  composed 
—must  produce  an  undulation  in  the  ether ;  this  undulation, 
which  itself  is  not  blue,  must  traverse  the  space  intervening 
between  the  picture  and  my  eye,  must  impinge  upon  the 
cornea,  pass  through  it  and  the  lens,  get  inverted,  reach  the 
retina  in  the  form  of  a  series  of  impulses,  produce  there 
complex  chemical  and  electrical  changes  which  generate  pro- 
cesses in  the  optic  nerve  that  pass  on  to  the  optical  centres 
in  the  cortex  and,  without  interruption,  continue  out  again 
as  efferent  currents.    There  would  seem  to  be  little  antecedent 
probability  that  we  get  even  the  same  kind  of  fact— e.  g.,  the 
same  color— at  the  end  of  all  these  maneuvers  as  lay  at  the 
terminus  a  quo.     And  it  is  clearly  improbable  that  the  'per- 
cept of  an  object '  which  somehow  emerges  as  an  undeniable 
fact  in  the  course  of  these  happenings  is  one  and  the  same 
existent  as  that  from  which  the  process  began.     Yet  that 
from  which  the  process  began  is  certainly  the  supposed  '  ob- 
ject '  of  perception. 

The  mere  fact,  then,  that  there  is  an  intricate  mechanism 
upon  which  perception  depends  constitutes  an  initial  difficulty 
for  epistemological  monism— a  difficulty  which  would  remain 
even  if  errors  of  perception  were  assumed  to  be  impossible. 
This  difficulty  has,  of  course,  long  been  apparent  to  all  the 
reflective  part  of  mankind.  Almost  at  the  beginning  of 
modern  English  philosophy  and  psychology  we  find  Hobbes 
arguing  that  because,  physiologically  speaking,  "  sense  is  some 
internal  motion  in  the  sentient,  generated  by  some  internal 
motion  of  the  parts  of  the  object,  and  propagated  through 
all  the  media  to  the  innermost  part  of  the  organ,"  therefore 
what  we  immediately  perceive  can  never  be  objects  but  only 
''  phantasms  "  due  to  objects.     "  As  in  vision,  so  also  in  con- 


ceptions that  arise  from  other  senses,  the  subject  of  their 
inherence  is  not  in  the  object,  but  in  the  sentient." 

Unfortunately,  moreover,  as  is  usually  supposed,  not  all 

ourperceptions reproduce  merely,  or  reproduce  faithfully, 

the_  characteristics  of  what  are  called  the  '  real  objects '  of 
the  physical  world.  We  must,  then,  pass  on  to  enumerate 
those  classes  of  perceptual  content  which  have  been  usually 
regarded  as  not  corresponding  to  'objective  reality,^  and  to 
note  the  implications  of  epistemological  monism,  or  the  denial 
of  the  existence  of  ideas,  with  respect  to  these  types  of 
content. 

(b)  It  has  been  a  commonplace  of  philosophy  and  psy- 
chology and  physics  since  the  seventeenth  century  that  the 
sensible  qualities  which  appear  in  consciousness  are  to  be  dis- 
tinguished into  two  sorts,  called  ^  primary  ^  and  'secondary' 
qualities,  and  that  the  secondary  must  be  held  to  be  '  sub- 
jective '  only,  i.  e.,  neither  to  be  nor  to  be  like  genuine  attri- 
butes of  the  assumed  physical  objects.  The  principal  reasons 
leading  to  this  doctrine  of  the  subjectivity  of  color,  sound, 
taste  and  smell  have,  of  course,  been  the  relativity  of  these 
qualities  to  the  varying  conditions  of  the  sensory  mechanism 
of  individuals,  and  the  fact  that '  presentations '  of  these  qua- 
lities can  be  induced  in  an  individual  consciousness  by  the 
mechanical  excitation  of  the  organs  of  sense,  without  the 
presence  of  any  object  in  which  other  observers  can  discover 
the  specific  qualities  apprehended  by  that  individual.  Our 
perception  of  the  primary  qualities,  so  far  as  this  distinction 
alone  is  concerned,  might  well  be  direct  and  without  the 
intermediation  of  images;  but  the  secondary  qualities  are 
a  sort  of  wedding-garment  which  the  object  is  compelled 
to  put  on  when  it  'enters  the  mind.'  Or,  according  to  the 
more  usual,  dualistic  view,  both  kinds  of  qualities  enter  the 
mind  in  the  form  of  ideas,  but  certain  of  these  are  similar 
to  attributes  of  the  object,  while  others  are  not.  In  Locke's 
words :  "  The  ideas  of  primary  qualities  are  resemblances 
of  them,  and  their  patterns  do  really  exist  in  the  bodies 


56 


On  fhe  Existence  of  Ideas 


[192 


themselves ;  but  the  ideas  produced  in  us  by  these  secondary 
qualities  have  no  resemblance  of  them  at  all.  They  are,  in 
the  bodies  we  denominate  from  them,  only  a  power  to  produce 
those  sensations  in  us ;  and  what  is  sweet,  blue,  or  warm  in 
idea,  is  but  the  certain  bulk,  figure  and  motion  of  the  insen- 
sible parts  in  the  bodies  themselves,  which  we  call  so." 

But  if,  as  our  new  theorists  maintain,  there  are  no  such 
entities  as  ideas,  the  secondary  qualities  can  be  as  little  sub- 
jective as  the  primary.     If  perception  can  have  only  things 
and  their  qualities  for  its  content,  all  qualities  which  actually 
present  themselves  in  perception  must  be  imputed  to  the 
actual  objects  which  we  are  supposed  directly  to  perceive. 
This  consequence  of  epistemological  monism  has  been  gener- 
ally apprehended  and,  indeed,  enthusiastically  proclaimed  by 
its   representatives   in   both   England   and   America.     Alex- 
ander, for  example,  observes  that  while  "  it  is  true  that  physi- 
cal science  confines  itself  to  the  study  of  the  primary  qualities 
of  matfer  and  treats  of  the  secondary  only  so  far  as  they 
are  conditioned  by  the  primary,"  yet  this  does  not  ''  amount 
to  a  denial  that  the  secondary  qualities  in  their  secondary 
form  are  physical.  ...  And  if  you  insist  in  denying  blue, 
as  such,  to  be  physical,  I  reply  that  it  was  shown  ages  ago,  for 
equally  good   reasons,  that  the  primary   qualities  must  be 
denied  to  be  physical."     Since  this  last  negation  is  some- 
thing which  no  realist  can  tolerate,  the  only  way  out,  ob- 
viously, was  to  turn  to  the  other  extreme  and  declare  that 
all  the  sensible  properties  of  matter  are  equally  objective  and 

non-mental.^ 

(c)  The  objects  which  we  are  said  to  be  conscious  of,  or 
to  '  have  in  mind,'  are,  as  everyone  knows,  not  always  sup- 
posed to  exist  as  real  things  at  the  moments  at  which  we 
are  conscious  of  them.  Memory,  for  example,  chances  To  be 
one  way  of  being  conscious  of  objects;  and  its  objects  always 
have  a  diilerent  date  from  the  memory-image  by  which  they 


'^Proc.  Ar.  Soc,  ix,  1908-9,  pp.  5-6. 


193] 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


57 


appear  to  be  mjome  fashi9i3t  represented.  Even  in  actual 
perception  tlie  existence  of  the  ^  real  object '  need  not  be — in 
a  sense,  it  never  is — identical  in  point  of  time  with  the 
existence  of  a  percept  of  that  object.  There  is  the  hackneyed 
instance  of  the  star  which  I  perceive  now,  though  the  real 
star  has,  a  thousand  years  since,  ceased  to  be  present  at  the 
position  in  space  in  which  it  appears.  By  reason  of  the 
fact  that  even  the  quickest  of  our  mental  processes  are  not 
absolutely  instantaneous,  there  must  be  assumed  to  be  in  all 
cases  at  least  some  slight  difference  between  the  instant  when 
a  certain  state  or  position  of  a  given  object  is  perceived  and 
the  instant  when  the  object  was  actually  in  that  state  or 
position. 

But  it  is  an  implication  of  the  theory  we  are  examining 
that  the  star  which  has  been  extinct  for  a  millennium  is  none 
the  less  the  salne  star  which  is  at  this  present  moment  in 
my  consciousness.  It  might,  perhaps,  at  first  be  thought  that 
the  theory  need  imply  only  that  some  real  star  is  at  present 
perceived  by  me.  Since  only  things,  and  not  ideas,  occur  in 
consciousness,  the  star  must  be  a  thing;  but  must  it  be  that 
particular  thing  which  has  ceased  to  be?  But  in  fact  the 
adherents  of  epistemological  monism  usually  appear  to  hold 
that  the  thing  in  consciousness  is  not  only  some  objective 
thing,  but  also  tlie  objective  thing  which  it  appears  to  be, 
that  a  given  percept  is  numerically  identical  with  the  parti- 
cular body  which  is  the  source  of  the  stimuli  acting  upon  our 
sense-organs  and  producing  just  that  perception.  Any  other 
interpretation  of  their  doctrine  would,  indeed,  involve  it  in 
singular  paradoxes.  But  so,  manifestly,  does  this  interpre- 
tation. It  is  hard  to  state  this  aspect  of  the  theory  in  words 
which  do  not  have  at  least  the  look  of  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  For  the  implication  in  question  precisely  is  that  that 
which  is  present  in  my  consciousness,  which  is  my  perceptual 
content  noiv,  is  one  and  the  same  being  with  something  that 
does  not  now  exist.  In  other  words,  the  denial  of  ideas 
would  appear  to  entail  the  assertion  that  a  thing  may  exist 
at  a  time  when  it  does  not  exist. 


58 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[194 


195] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


59 


'^ 


(d)   A  feature  of  our  perceptual   content  which  a   very 
early   and  obvious  reflection  taught  mankind  to  regard  as 
subjective,  as  '  mere  appearance/  is  to  be  seen  in  those  or- 
ganic illusions  which  are  necessary  consequences  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  physical  or  physiological  mechanism  involved  m 
perception.     Such  are  the  phenomena  of  perspective  and  the 
distortions  due  to  the  refraction  of  light  by  the  different 
media  through  which  it  passes.     These  are  normal  charac- 
teristics of  objects,  as  experienced;  it  is  impossible  for  the 
most   profound   physicist   to   see   the    straight   stick    thrust 
partly  under  water  otherwise  than  as  bent.     But  the  savage 
and  the  child  very  early  recognize  that  it  only  '  looks  bent ' 
and  is  not  '  really '  so,  and  thus  learn  to  distrust  the  evidence 
of  sense.     They  do  so  because  the  evidence  of  the  sense  of 
\  sight  conflicts  with  that  of  touch— if,  at  least,  as  mankind  has 
always  supposed,  the  several  senses,  in  spite  of  their  utter  dis- 
similarity,  deal   with  the  same  objects  in   a  single  spatial 
system.  "^At  the  point  in  space  at  which  an  angle  in  the 
stick  is  seen,  no  angle  is  felt.     And  men  in  this  matter  have 
chosen  to  regard  touch  rather  than  vision  as  veridical.     They 
have  ultimately  done  so  largely  because  the  report  of  the 
object  given  by  tactual  sensation  can  be  made  to  fit  into  a 
fairly  consistent  and  satisfactory  intellectual  reconstruction 
of  the  world  of  objects,  as  the  report  of  visual  sensation  can 
not.     It  is  to  be  observed  that  this  reconstruction  d^es  not 
'  explain '  these  false  appearances  by  any  supposed  property 
of  '  ideas.'     Their  explanation  is  physical,  not  psychological. 
The  distortions  occur,  not  merely  '  outside  of  consciousness ' 
but  (many  of  them)  also  outside  of  the  body.     The  '  image' 
of  the  stick  is  bent  on  the  camera-plate,  as  well  as  '  in  the 
mind.'     This  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  what  does  appear 
in  perception  is  different  in  its  characteristics  from  the  ob- 
ject which  is  supposed  to  be,  by  means  of  that  perception, 
known  or  apprehended. 

What,  now,  is  the  implication  of  the  monistic  theory  of 
perception  with  respect  to  this  class  of  content?     Since  the 


theory  holds  that  all  sensation  '^guarantees  the  extra-men- 
tality of  its  content,"  the  proper  conclusion  would  seem  to 
be  that  the  stick  has  objectively  hoth  of  the  characters  which 
the  two  senses  reveal  it  as  having :  that  it  is  at  once  straight 
and  bent.  Some  adherents  of  the  theory,  however,  are  natur- 
ally desirous  of  evading  a  consequence  so  peculiar;  and  they 
therefore  make  much  of  the  circumstance  already  noted,  that 
these  illusions  are  fully  explained  by  natural  science  and  that 
in  the  explanations  any  reference  to  consciousness  or  ideas 
is  found  quite  superfluous.  Thus  Woodbridge  asks :  '^  If  we 
want  to  know  why  the  stick  appears  bent  and  not  straight, 
is  not  the  answer  water?  Is  not  the  case  now  disposed  of? 
It  is  water  which  makes  the  straight  stick  appear  bent,  tut 
not  the  eyes.  The  senses  deceive  us  because,  not  revealing 
the  causes  why  things  appear  as  they  do,  we  are  led  astray. 
The  moment  that  we  discover  that  it  is  water  which  makes 
the  stick  appear  bent,  we  can  allow  for  the  refraction  and 
be  satisfied.  But  this  is  not  a  matter  of  epistemology,  but 
of  action,  of  stimulus  and  of  response."  ^  Yet,  one  must  re- 
peat, since  the  appearance  after  all  does  misrepresent  the 
particular  object,  or  the  particular  portion  of  space,  of 
which  it  is  an  appearance,  there  is  still  no  escape  from  the 
admission  that  the  content  in  perception  is  not  identical  with 
that  object — whatever  else  it  may  be  identical  with.  One 
might,  perhaps,  hold  that  it  is  identical  with  the  image  on 
the  retina,  in  which  the  distortion  due  to  the  unequal  refract- 
ing power  of  air  and  water  has  already  taken  place.  This 
would  permit  one  to  maintain  after  a  fashion  the  non-mental, 
i.  e.,  the  physical,  character  of  the  perceived  content.  But  it 
would  not  be  after  the  fashion  of  the  epistemological  monist 
that  one  then  maintained  it. 

(e)  It  has  long  been  assumed  by  nearly  all  men  that  cer- 
tain -content — that,  namely,  which  is  presented  in  dreams,  in 


^  Woodbridge,  "  The  Deception  of  the  Senses,"  Jour,  of  Philosophy^ 
X,  1913,  p.  9. 


60 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[196 


hallucinations  and  in  those  illusions  which  are  peculiar  to 
individuals— is  '  subjective  appearance '  only,  having  no  being 
apart  from  or  independently  of  the  individual  consciousnesses 
in  which  it  occurs.  This  assumption,  it  is  true,  apparently 
was  not  made  by  primitive  man.  Dream-experiences  seem 
to  be  looked  upon  by  the  savage  as  not  essentially  different 
from  other  experiences ;  and  they  play  an  especially  large  part 
in  determining  his  beliefs  about  the  world.  The  invention 
of  a  category  of  the  merely  subjective  was  a  definite  step 
forward  in  the  intellectual  history  of  mankind;  and  it  was 
the  first  step  in  the  history  of  the  belief  in  ideas.  Here 
was  a  class  of  experienced  entities  which  it  clearly  seemed 
impossible  to  regard  as  '  things.'  For  this  class  of  perceptual 
or  quasi-perceptual  content  is,  in  the  first  place,  usually 
private  and  unshared;  it  does  not  belong  to  that  world  of 
public  objects  of  which  the  existence  and  nature  can  be  veri- 
^ed  by  the  generality  of  observers.  It  has  no  social  currency. 
This,  however,  is  the  least  of  its  infirmities.  Its  most  serious 
fault  is  that,  i^  we  attempt  to  find  a  place  for  it  in  that  single 
coherent  physical  order  to  which  '  objective '  things  are  sup- 
posed to  belong,  we  are  involved  in  propositions  which  appear 
self-contradictory.  We  are  compelled  to  say  that  a  given 
object  has  two  incompatible  qualities— that,  for  example,  ac 
a  single  moment  the  same  surface  of  the  object  has  two 
colors  or  two  shapes.  And  we  are  compelled  to  say  that  the 
same  portion  of  space  is  occupied  by  two  different  bodies,  or 
is  both  filled  and  not  filled  by  a  material  body.  For  the 
victim  of  a  hallucination,  gazing  upon  the  same  space  whicn 
others  behold  and  seeing  in  part  the  same  objects,  sees  them 
as  possessing  qualities  contradictory  of  the  qualities  which 

j  they  present  to  other  eyes;  or  sees  regions  of  space  which  for 
others  are  empty,  occupied  by  interesting  or  alarming  ob- 
jects; or  sees  objects  of  one  kind  in  the  same  space  where 
others  see  objects  of  a  wholly  different  kind.  Since  the 
possession  of  contradictory  qualities  by  the  same  thing  has 

I    usually  seemed  to  men  irreconcilable  with  the  very  notion  of 


197] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


61 


a  '  real '  thing  having  a  '  nature '  of  its  own ;  and  since  the 
presence  of  two  bodies  in  the  same  space  has  similarly  ap- 
peared incongruous  with  the  conception  of  ^  body '  and  the 
properties  ascribed  to  space; — for  these  reasons  above  all,  it 
has  been  found  necessary  to  conceive  of  a  realm  of  thoughts 
which  are  not  things,  or  even  copies  of  things,  to  recognize 
'  being  in  consciousness '  as  a  special,  limited,  extra-spatial 
mode  of  existence,  which  alone  is  to  be  ascribed  to  the 
unsharable  and  contradiction-breeding  type  of  perceived  con- 
tent. Thus  the  most  important  practical  function  of  the 
conception  of  consciousness,  or  of  ^  minds,'  at  all  times  has 
been  that  it  has  enabled  men  to  keep  their  conception  of 
nature  unpolluted  by  contradictions.  It  has,  as  it  were,  dis- 
tributed the  elements  that  would  otherwise  have  been  con- 
tradictory amongst  a  number  of  closed  and  insulated  com- 
partments. The  contents  of  any  one  of  these  might  be,  and 
in  fact  often  were,  entirely  in  conflict  with  the  contents  of 
any  other,  or  of  the  supposed  world  of  real  objects  which  was 
over  against  them  all;  but  this  has  been  felt  to  do  no 
injury  to  the  intelligibility  of  things,  to  offer  no  insuperable 
obstacle  to  the  operation  of  the  human  reason,  provided  that 
no  contradiction  was  found  within  the  limits  of  any  one  of 
these  systems  (at  any  one  moment),  and  provided,  above  all, 
that  the  objective  system  was  kept  free  from  inner  logical 
discord. 

If,  however,  "  sensational  experience  of  whatever  sort "  be 
held  to  "guarantee  the  extra-mentality  of  its  object,"  this 
ancient  and  serviceable  device  must  apparently  be  given  up. 
Hallucinatory  content  must  be  placed  in  the  same  objective 
world  of  things  with  the  objects  of  normal  perception;  and 
the  resultant  contradictions  must  either  be  resolved  and 
shown  to  be  only  apparent;  or,  if  this  be  impossible,  seK- 
contradiction  must  be  accepted  as  a  genuine  characteristic 
of  things  and  be  regarded  as  constituting  no  evidence  of 
unreality.  At  least  one  neo-realistic  writer  has,  though  not 
without  wavering,  adopted  this  last  view  as  the  proper  conse- 


62 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[198 


quence  of  the  epistemological  monism  to  which  he  adheres. 
Others  have  sought  to  explain  the  contradictions  away,  or  at 
least  to  make  them  seem  very  little  ones.  One  s}Tnpathizer 
with  the  new  doctrine,  for  example,  has  quoted  with  glee  a 
remark  of  Lord  Kelvin's,  that  he  sees  no  reason  why  two 
bodies  should  not  occupy  the  same  space.  Another  has  urged 
that  we  actually  experience  this  '  dual  space-occupancy ' — 
when,  namely,  we  '  see '  an  image  in  the  space  behind  a 
mirror  where  we  can  at  the  same  moment  feel  the  wall. 
There  is  a  marked  tendency  among  new  realists  to  deal  with 
the  difficulty  about  the  contradictory  qualities  which  it  would 
seem  necessary  to  impute  to  objects — if  all  the  qualities  which 
any  object  is  ever  perceived  by  anybody  as  having  are  as- 
sumed to  be  objectively  possessed  by  it — by  assimilating  th«3 
notion  of  quality  to  that  of  relation.  That  a  thing  has  one 
relation  to  A  and  a  different  and  incongruous  relation  to  B, 
is  regarded  by  no  one  as  a  violation  of  the  principle  of  con- 
tradiction. If,  then,  a  thing's  qualities  also  can  be  treated 
as  belonging  to  it  only  in  specified  relations  to  other  things, 
it  may,  without  damage  to  the  logical  proprieties,  possess 
as  many  and  as  discrepant  qualities  as  you  please.  On  the 
other  hand,  one  of  the  founders  of  the  new  doctrine  about 
consciousness  repudiates  all  this  relativism  and  juggling  with 
contradictions,  and  declares  that  the  paradoxes  into  which 
many  of  his  fechool  have  been  led  to  resort,  in  their  attempt 
to  reconcile  their  monistic  epistemology  with  the  fact  of  hal- 
lucinations, will,  if  not  checked,  be  fatal  to  the  whole  move- 
ment. 

Tniu  the  discussion  of  these  various  ways  of  dealing  with 
the  problem  I  do  not  mean,  at  this  point,  to  enter.  I  mention 
them  now  onlv  to  show  that  the  denial  of  ideas  is  generallv 
acknowledged  to  involve  the  assertion  of  the  objectivity  of 
the  hallucinatory;  and  that  the  latter  has  caused  great  diffi- 
culties for  the  philosophers  inclined  to  the  former,  and  has 
set  them  violentlv  at  variance  with  one  another. 

What  all  this  elaboration  of  familiar — but,  by  the  theorists 


199] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


63 


in  question,  long  oddly  neglected — considerations  shows  is 
that  the  belief  in  mental  representations  is  not,  at  all  events, 
a  groundless  and  functionless  philosophical  superstition,  but  a 
natural  product  of  human  reflection  upon  certain  common 
human  experiences.     It  has  been  applied  by  mankind  to  one 
class  of  content  after  another  for  perfectly  intelligible  rea- 
sons; and  it  has  rendered  man,  in  his  progressive  effort  to 
gain  a  rational  understanding  of  the  world  he  lives  in,  cer- 
tain definite  and  genuine  services.     If  it  is  to  be  abandoned, 
the  falsity  of  the  reasons  which  have  historically  generated  it 
must  first  be  demonstrated;  and  some  other  clear  hypothesis 
must  be  presented  to  render  intelligible  the  facts  which  it  has 
in  the  past  been  supposed  to  make  less  alien  to  man's  reason. 
Before,  however,  I  proceed  to  the  examination  of  the  reas- 
ons which  have  led  so  many  contemporary  philosophers  wholly 
to  reject  this  belief  in  ideas,  it  will  be  worth  while  to  notice 
the  relation  of  this  philosophical  movement  to  certain  ten- 
dencies  recently   apparent   among   psychologists.     The   pro- 
posal to  eliminate  the  method  of  introspection  from  psy- 
chology seems  at  first  sight  to  be  but  another  manifestation 
of  the  same  '^  revolt  against  the  tyranny  of  images  " ;  for  the 
principal  ground  for  this  proposal  appears  to  be  the  con- 
viction that  there  is  nothing  to  introspect — that  is,  that  there 
is  no  peculiarily  inward  or  'subjective'  variety  of  empirical 
facts,  which  can  be  reached  only  through  a  peculiar  type  of 
observation,    unlike   that   employed   by   the   other    sciences. 
The  repudiation  of  the  method  of  introspection  in  psychology 
would  therefore  appear  to  imply  a  monistic  theory  of  percep- 
tion, and  vice  versa;  while  epistemological  dualism 'and  the 
belief  in  the  possibility  of  introspection  would  similarly  seem 
to  go  together.     Professor  Dunlap  in  a  recent  paper  has 
dwelt  upon  the  connection  between  the  psychological  notion 
of  introspection  and  the  epistemological  theory  of  represen- 
tative ideas.     According*  to  the  once  common  view,  he  re- 
marks, "there  are  thoughts,  which  are  known,  and  things 


ii 


64 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[200 


corresponding  to  the  thoughts,  which  are  also  known.  A 
cabbage  is  known,  and  there  is  also  in  the  '  stream  of  con- 
sciousness' a  'thought'  of  a  cabbage,  which  is  known,  no 
matter  by  what.  If  this  sort  of  representationalism  is  ac- 
cepted, there  is  no  objection  to  calling  the  knowing  of  a 
thought  [as  distinct  from  the  knowing  of  the  tliought's 
object]  'introspection.'"  But  to  Professor  Dunlap  such 
representationalism  seems  wholly  a  disused  mode,  an  outworn 
theme.  "  The  day  for  such  psychical  mechanics,"  he  writes, 
"  has  gone  by.  The  ghostly  world  of  representational  '  ideas  ' 
or  '  states  of  consciousness,'  dim  shadows  through  which  we 
may  look  at  the  real  objects  casting  them,  .  .  .  attracts  no 
longer  faith  or  interest.  There  are  probably  no  psychologists 
at  the  present  time  who  hold  to  '  introspection  '  explicitly 
on  these  representational  grounds.  If  there  are  such,  I  cer- 
tainly do  not  wish  to  argue  the  point  with  them."® 

It  is  evident,  however,  that  the  'representationalism'  or 
epistemological  dualism  here  referred  to  affirms  the  '  mental ' 
character  of  all  the  immediate  content  of  perception.  What 
is  discovered  in  consciousness,  it  declares,  is  in  every  case  pri- 
marily an  '  idea,'  though  it  may  be  an  idea  representative  of 
an  external  object.  If,  then,  the  apprehension  of  an  idea  is 
to  be  called  introspection,  all  perception  (as  Professor  Dunlap 
himself  has  elsewhere  noted)  would,  according  to  representa- 
tionalism,.  be  introspection.  The  chemist  watching  a  re- 
action would  be  introspecting ;  for  he  would  be  observing  con- 
tent which,  by  hypothesis,  is  primarily  mental.  But  when 
the  notion  of  introspection  is  thus  generalized  it  becomes 
meaningless;  it  fails  to  mark  any  distinction  between  the  pro- 
cedure of  the  psychologist  and  the  procedure  of  the  physical 
scientist.  What  this  proves  is  not  the  falsity  of  represen- 
tationalism, but  merely  its  independence  of  the  distinction 
between  introspection  and  external  observation.  The  "case 
against  introspection"  might  indeed,  plausibly  be  put  upon 


8  Dunlap,  "  The  Case  Against  Introspection,"  Psych,  Rev.,  19,  1912. 


201] 


Arthur  0.  Love  joy 


65 


reprcsentationalist  grounds.  Those  who  believe  all  content 
to  be  ideas,  it  might  be  argued,  are  least  of  all  likely  to  find 
any  place  for  a  special  mode  of  acquaintance  with  content, 
needing  to  be  distinguished  from  other  modes  by  the  name 
of  introspection. 

This,  however,  though  plausible  would  not  be  accurate. 
The    reprcsentationalist   might    still    discriminate    amongst 
ideas,  and  hold  that  certain  of  them  are  material  for  intro- 
spection only,   in   a  sense  in  which  the  others  are  not  so 
describable.     For  example,  those  among  our  ideas  which  are 
regarded  as  not  corresponding  to  '  real  objects '  might  be 
defined  as  accessible  exclusively  to  introspection.     This  is,  in 
fact,  apparently  one  of  the  ways  in  which  people  in  general 
make  their  distinction  between  introspection  and  ordinary  ob- 
servation.    When  I  report  the  sort  of  content  which  I  get 
in  the  case  of  a  tactual  or  visual  illusion,  I  am  said  to  be 
introspecting,  for  the  reason  that  the  content  is  held  to  be 
'subjective' — not  in  the  sense  in  which,  by  the  epistemo- 
logical dualist,  all  content  is  held  to  be  subjective,  but  in 
quite  another  sense.     Yet  in  such  a  case  I  am  doing  es- 
sentially the  same  thing  as  when  I  report  how  an  object  of 
which  my  perception  is  supposed  to  be  veridical  feels  or  looks ; 
I  am  simply  telling  what  sort  of  content  is  there.     Again, 
when  I  try  to  remember  how  a  street  which   I  saw  in  a 
dream  looked,  I  should  by  many  be  said  to  introspect;  when 
I  try  to  remember  how  Baltimore  Street  looks,  I  should  not 
be   said    by   most   people   to    introspect.      Yet,    once    more, 
1  am  in  both  instances  but  describing  objects  which  actually 
appeared   in   my  consciousness.     The  first  object,   however, 
happens  to  be  one  which  nobody  else  saw  or  could  see,  which 
is  so  impermanent  that  even  I  can  not  return  to  it  for  fur- 
ther verifying  observations,  which  can  not  be  fitted  into  the 
dynamic  system  of  physical  nature  set  forth  by  natural  sci- 
ence ;  while  the  other  object — even  though  it  too  be  supposed 
to  be  primarily  but  my  representation — appears  to  agree  with 
other  people's  perceptions,  to  be  relatively  stable  and  sus- 


66 


On  ihe  Existence  of  Ideas 


[202 


ceptible  of  further  observation,  and  to  correspond  with  those 
hypotheses  about  the  order  of  physical  events  which  science 
accepts.  I  do  not  say  that  this  contrast  would  adequately 
define  the  difference  between  introspection  and  physical  ob- 
servation. I  say  only  that  it  would  define  a  difference  by 
means  of  which  a  clear  distinction  between  the  two  could 
be  set  up  within  the  limits  of  the  general  representationalist 

scheme  of  things. 

The  contrast  between  that  content  which  is  '  subjective/  in 
,   the  sense  that  it  is  not  open  directly  to  the  observation  of 
other  people  and  is  not  taken  to  be  truly  representative  of 
any  '  real  object/  and  that  content  which  appears  to  more 
than  one  observer  and  passes  for  veridical,— this  must  be 
made  by  the  Lockian  dualist  as  well  as  by  anyone  else,  and 
affords  him  a  natural  way  of  discriminating  the  ideas  that 
are  introspectible  only  from  those  others  which,  though  also 
'  mental,'  are  believed  by  him  to  correspond  in  some  fashion 
to   extra-mental   realities.     The   same   discrimination   could 
be  made  in  substantially  the  same  way  by  the  Berkeleian 
idealist;  the  only  difference  would  be  that  the  veridical  repre- 
sentations would  by  him  be  defined  as  corresponding,  not  to 
wholly  extramcntal  realities,  but  to  the  perceptions  of  other 
minds,  and  as  conforming  to  the  prevailing  uniformities  of 
the  sequence  of  natural  events.     '  True  '  perceptions  would 
be  those  agreeing  with  what  a  great  man  of  science  has  not 
long  since  described  as  the  only  ''  objective  "  physical  reality 
whk^h  we  can  know  anything  of :  "  what  is,  will  become,  or 
will  remain,  common  to  all  thinking  beings."® 

There  is  possible,  then,  no  direct  inference  from  the  belief 
that  the  immediate  content  of  perception  consists  of  ideas  to 
the  conclusion  that  introspection,  in  any  practically  useful 
sense  of  that  word,  is  an  essential  procedure  in  psychology. 
The  representationalist's  assertion  of  the  mental  character  of 
percepts  is  not  equivalent  to  a  vindication  of  the  introspective 


» Poincar^,  The  Value  of  Science,  in  Pop.  Sci.  Mo.,  Vol.  71,  p.  63. 


203] 


Arthur  0.  Love  joy 


er 


method.     But  on  the  other  hand,  his  scheme  permits  a  clear 
differentiation  of  introspection  and  other  observation  and  a 

recognition  of  the  possibility  of  both  processes. 

What,  however,  shall  we  say  of  the  logical  relation  between 
epistemological  monism  (of  the  realistic  sort)  and  the  recog- 
nition of  a  class  of  content  accessible  to  introspection  only? 
Can  one  who  denies  the  existence  of  ideas  and  of  mental 
states  in  toto  find  room  in  his  world  for  any  content  of  this 
type  ?     The  answer  will,  of  course,  depend  upon  the  meaning 
here  to  be  assigned  to  the  term.     The  ''  spection  "  certainly 
cannot  be  directed  "  inward  " ;  even  in  the  case  of  illusions 
the  data  observed  must,  as  we  have  seen,  upon  monistic  prin- 
ciples be  '  extra-mental.'     But,  it  would  appear,  there  can  be 
certain  content  which  is  directly  accessible  to  one  observer 
only.     The  interesting  hypothesis  presented  elsewhere  in  this 
Circular  by  Professor  Dunlap,  while  it  is  a  clear  case  ^  of 
epistemological   monism,   expressly   recognizes   that   certain 
data,  both  of  sensation  and  thought,  are  not  open  to  general 
observation,  but  can  be  reached  and  attested  at  first  hand 
only  by  the  individual  within  whose  body  they  occur.     My 
muscle-sensations,  according  to  this  view,  are  not  representa*^ 
tions;  they  are  an  actual  physical  condition  of  the  muscle. 
But  that  condition  can  never,  as  such,  be  '  in  the  conscious- 
ness' of  anyone  but  myself.     The  same,  I  suppose,  would 
be  said  of  illusions,  hallucinations  and  dreams.     While  their 
content  is  held  to  be  objective,  it  is  certainly  not  publicly! 
verifiable;  and  the  strictly  private  awareness  of  it  might 
also  very  naturally  be  called  introspection.     It  would  thus 
follow  that  the  epistemological  monist  may  take,  with  regard  I 
to  introspection,  much  the  same  position  as  his  dualistic  op- 
ponent; he  too  may  acknowledge  the  existence  of  purely 
introspectible  material,  in  a  natural  and  definite  sense  of  the 
expression— which,   for   all   the   practical   purposes   of   psy- 
chology, is  the  same  sense  as  that  in  which  the  term  is 
employed  by  the  representationalist. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  the  plausibility  of  this,  reflection  suggests 


C8 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[20-i 


205] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


69 


one  or  two  difficulties  in  the  conjunction  of  a  disbelief  m 
representations  with  a  belief  in  introspection.     One  is  com- 
pelled to  ask,  in  the  first  place,  in  what  sense  content  which 
exists  only  in  my  private  consciousness  is  declared,  to  be  ob- 
jective or  extra-mental.     If  it  is  not  merely  ideas    ^vherein 
is  it  differentiated  from  ideas?     And  even  if  the  differentia 
were  formulated  how  could  it  be  applied?     How  could  one 
'    determine  by  introspection  solely  whether  a  given  datum  were 
mental  or  physical?     Is  the  muscle  sensation  which  nobody 
but  mvself  knows  or  ever  can  know-except  through  my  re- 
port oi  it-external  in  the  sense  that  it  fills  a  portion  of 
space  which  is,  so  to  say,  otherwise  unaccounted  for?     Evi- 
dently not;  the  ^objective'  space  which  the  muscle  occupies 
can  be  fully  explored  by  the  senses  of  other  observers.     Is 
the  muscle  sensation,  again,  a  part  of  that  system  of  forces 
with  which  the  equations  of  the  physicist  deal?     Apparently 
not  that,  either;  just  in  so  far  as  the  sensation  is  private 
and  inalienable,  it  contains  a  residual  somewhat  which  re- 
fuses to  enter  the  realm  of  publicly  verifiable  facts  with  which 
alone  physical  science  is  concerned.     This  sensation  may  be 
accompanied  by  an  energy-transfer;  but   it  cannot   he  the 
latter,  for  energy-transfers  are  not  discovered  through  mtro^ 
^pection.     But^if  the  content  that  is  accessible  only  to  in- 
trospection is  not  objective  in  cither  of  the  ways  indicated, 
in  what  way  is  it  objective?     Has  it  not  all  the  marks  of  a 
subjective  datum— inasmuch  as  it  is  present  in  a  particular, 
individual  complex  of  consciousness,  and  is  not  shown,  or 
even  in  any  intelligible  sense  asserted,  to  have  any  other 
existence  beyond  its  presence  in  that  consciousness?     Is  not 
this  kind  of  existent  precisely  what  is  usually  meant  by  '  a 
mere  idea*?     These  questions  suggest  a  suspicion  that  the 
I    belief  in  the  existence  of  purely   introspectible  or  private 
content  is  one  which  can  not  easily  be  reconciled  with  episte- 

mological  monism. 

Another  difficulty  presents  itself  when  we  recall  that  we 
are,  after  all,  supposed  to  have  some  knowledge  about  the 


facts  known  to  other  people  through  their  introspection. 
We  can  not  possess  these  data  directly  as  sensations,  and  we 
are  always  ultimately  dependent  for  our  knowledge  of  their 
existence  upon  the  testimony  of  the  subjects  of  them.  But 
with  this  given,  we  can  (as  the  view  now  under  consideration 
seems  to  imply)  make  them  the  objects  of  our  thought. 
Without  having  them  directly  in  our  consciousness  (which 
would  be  contradictory  of  the  privacy  ascribed  to  them),  we 
may  yet  have  in  our  consciousness  something  which,  by  the 
hypothesis  in  question,  stands  for,  refers  to,  and  forms  the 
basis  for  a  knowledge  of,  these  existences.  Such  a  view, 
however,  seems  to  bear  a  strong  family  resemblance  to  repre- 
sentationalism.  It  is  fully  committed  to  the  assertion  of  the 
duality  (in  this  particular  case)  of  a  thing  represented  and 
a  somewhat  which  represents  it.  It  will  not  do  for  the 
holder  of  this  hypothesis  to  say  that  the  actual  content  of 
my  consciousness,  when  I  think  of  some  purely  personal 
experience  of  my  neighbor's,  is  identically  a  part,  though 
not  the  whole,  of  that  experience  itself.  For  what  I  am 
thinking  of  is,  by  definition,  precisely  that  part  of  his  ex- 
perience which  is  not  my  content  and  which  yet  is  the  object . 
to  which  my  thought  refers.  And  the  ^  thought '  which  so 
refers  is  itself,  surely,  a  bit  of  my  content,  as  are  the  very 
notion  of  ^  reference '  and  the  express  distinction  between  the 
content  now  present  to  me  and  the  external  reality  which  it 
enables  me  to  ^know.'  Here,  then,  we  have  a  situation  of 
exactly  the  same  type  as  that  which  the  representationalist, 
or  dualistic  realist,  believes  to  be  exemplified  also  in  our 
acquaintance  with  physical  objects. 

There  is,  however,  another  new  and  much  discussed  doc- 
trine among  psychologists  which  does  not  hesitate  to  deny 
the  existence  of  any  content  essentially  limited  to  a  single 
perceiver  and  therefore  verifiable  only  through  introspection. 
This  is  the  theory  known  as  behaviorism,  which  proposes 
to  convert  psychology  into  a  strictly  "  objective  study  of 
human  and  animal  behavior."     Professor  Watson  has  recently 


0 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[206 


defended  this  proposal  with  especial  clarity  and  boldness. 
"  The  time  has  come/'  he  writes,  "  when  psycholog}'  must  dis- 
card all  reference  to  consciousness:  when  it  no  longer  need 
delude  itself  into  thinking  that  it  is  making  mental  states 
the  object  of  observation/'  It  really  "  needs  introspection  as 
little  as  the  sciences  of  chemistry  and  physics."  Its  goal  is 
not  "  description  and  explanation  of  states  of  consciousness 
as  such  " ;  its  business  is  merely  to  study,  through  carefully 
devised  experiments,  the  observable  responses  of  different 
organisms  to  diverse  stimuli,  to  ascertain  the  laws  of  the 
acquisition  and  retention  of  skill  in  their  non-instinctive  ac- 
tivities, and  the  like.  Even  when  such  experimentation  is 
applied  to  the  human  subject  ''we  care  as  little  about  his 
conscious  processes  during  the  conduct  of  the  experiment  as 
we  care  about  such  processes  in  the  rats  "  which  may  serve  as 
subjects  of  study  for  the  specialist  in  animal  behavior.^° 

In  so  far  as  this  interesting  view  is  defended  on  merely 
practical  and  methodological  grounds,  it  has  not  necessarily 
serious  philosophical  implications.  And,  clearly,  it  is  largely 
upon  such  grounds  that  it  has  been  defended  by  Professor 
Watson.  In  the  paper  last  quoted  he  refrains  from  denying, 
though  also  from  affirming,  the  reality  of  a  realm  of  "  purely 
psychic  existences."  One  of  the  sentences  cited,  indeed,  in- 
timates that  in  the  human  subject  there  may  be  conscious 
processes  going  on  during  the  conduct  of  the  experiment; 
the  point  is  only  that  the  psychologist  as  a  man  of  science 
has  no  concern  with  them.  What  the  behaviorist  primarily 
feels  is  that,  if  a  purely  inner  or  mental  realm  exists,  it  is 
not,  at  any  rate,  accessible  to  the  experimental  method  strictly 
construed;  and  that  the  introspective  method  has  by  this 
time  proved  itself  incapable  of  yielding  properly  scientific 
results— results  which  are  exact,  quantitatively  formulable, 
and  verifiable  by  all  trained  investigators.     It  is  this  sense  of 


10 


Watson,  "  Psychology  as  the  Behaviorist  Views  It,"  Psych.  Rev., 
XX,  1913,  pp.  158  ff. 


207] 


Arthur  0.  Love  joy 


71 


the  unproductiveness,  the  indecisiveness  and  the  lack  of  prac-  i 
tical  applicability  of  all  introspective  psychology  which  seems  » 
to  have  led  some  to  behaviorism;  not  a  philosophical  convic- 
tion that  theie  is  in  organic  responses  no  consciousness  dis- 
tinct from  physical  behavior.     It  is,  then,  only  when  behav- 
iorism is  taken  as  implying  this  last   proposition   that    it 
manifests  a  resemblance  to  epistemological  monism  and  be- 
comes a  suitable  subject  for  the  consideration  of  the  philo- 
sopher.    The  proposition,  however,  is  frequently  supposed  to 
be  a  part  of  the  behaviorist's  doctrine;  and  the  dogma  that 
consciousness  is  behavior  was  expressly  proclaimed  by  Pro- 
fessor Singer  some  years  ago.^^     It  is,  then,  pertinent  to  the  ^ 
purposes  of  this  paper  to  note  the  logical  relations  of  this 
more  radical  behaviorism  to  epistemological  monism. 

It  may  be  said  to  be  in  agreement  with  what  the  latter 
denies  but  not  with  what  it  affirms.  What  is  present  when  I 
perceive  an  object,  the  radical  behaviorist  tells  me,  is  never 
an  image  of  the  object,  or  even  a  set  of  sensations  dis- 
criminable  from  the  physiological  processes  of  the  sense- 
organs.  In  repudiating  the  image,  then,  this  newest  psycho- 
logy is  at  one  with  the  new  realism.  But  beyond  this  point 
the  two  doctrines  sharply  diverge.  This  divergence  it  is  easy 
to  overlook  because  of  a  common  failure  to  note  the  impli- 
cations of  the  position  of  the  behaviorist.  The  thesis  that 
what  has  usually  been  called  '  consciousness '  is  really  nothing 
but  '  behavior '  is,  as  we  have  seen,  put  forward  primarily 
as  a  statement  concerning  the  object  of  the  psychologist's 
investigations.  What  he  '  knows,'  when  his  inquiries  are  suc- 
cessful, are  facts  about  behavior;  what  he  perceives,  when  he 
observes  a  subject,  is,  it  might  be  supposed,  the  actual  phy- 
sical bodies  (i.  e.,  the  parts  of  the  organism)  and  their  mo- 
tions, in  which  behavior  consists.  His  doctrine,  however,  takes 
on  a  somewhat  different  aspect  when  we  remember  that  the 
proposition  '  consciousness  is  behavior '  must  apply  to  know- 


^Jour.  of  Philosophy,  viii,  1911,  p.  180. 


72 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[208 


ing,  and  even  to  the  knowledge  of  the  psychologist  himself. 
This  is  a  consideration  upon  which  our  behavorists  seem  thus 
far  to  have  bestowed  small  attention.  They  have  apparently 
been  little  interested  in  the  odd — and,  surely,  the  important — 
fact  that  much  of  our  so-called  behavior,  and  specifically 
the  behavior  of  th'e  psychological  investigator,  is,  or  purports 
to  be,  cognitive;  that  it  is  supposed  to  give  us  information 
about  realities  external  to  itself,  to  enable  us  to  know  entities 
outside  the  spatial  limits  of  our  own  bodies.  The  behaviorist 
for  the  most  part  ignores  the  epistemological  problems  which 
are  inseparably  connected  with  the  psychological  problem 
of  perception;  yet  his  psychological  account  of  the  matter, 
in  so  far  as  it  professes  to  be  a  complete  account,  evidently 
implies  an  epistemological  theory.  For  him,  the  actual  con- 
tent of  my  percept  of  an  object  is  neither  a  mental  image  of 
the  object,  nor  ijet  the  object  itself;  it  is  certain  bodily  pro- 
cesses within  me — minute  movements  of  the  muscles  of  the 
eye,  neural  excitations  associated  therewith,  perhaps  incipient 
word-forming  movements  in  the  vocal  organs,  and  so  on. 
The  behaviorist  assumes,  to  be  sure,  that  these  physiological 
performances  are  stimulated  by  the  action  of  physical  ob- 
jects, and  in  the  external  reality  of  these  objects  he  appears 
implicitly  to  believe.  But  his  account  of  the  nature  of  cog- 
nitive consciousness  does  not  make  it  intelligible  how  either 
he,  or  the  subject  of  his  study,  can  ever  know  those  objects; 
and  it  certainly  implies  that  a  direct — or,  in  truth,  that  any 
— apprehension  of  them  by  any  subject  is  impossible.  For 
obviously,  the  real  object  cannot,  as  a  rule,  be  supposed  to 
leave  its  place  in  space  and  physically  enter  my  body;  and 
'knowing,'  therefore,  if  it  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  kind  of 
bodily  behavior,  cannot  consist  in  any  actual  access  to  the 
object.  Or,  to  put  the  same  point  in  other  words,  a  percept 
which  is  a  motion  inside  my  organism  cannot  be  '  numeri- 
cally identical '  with  a  thing,  or  a  quality,  or  even  a  motion, 
which,  ex  hypothesi,  is  not  inside  my  organism.  Thus  the 
epistemolog}'  implied  in  behaviorism,  whatever  else  be  said 


209] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


73 


of  it,  is  manifestly  inharmonious  with  epistemological  mon- 
ism. It  may  be  described  as  a  sort  of  corporeal  subjectivism; 
and  it  is  no  less  at  variance  with  the  new  realist's  doctrine 
of  the  '  numerical  identity  of  percept  and  real  object '  than 
is  the  older  psychical  subjectivism.  The  two  theories,  in 
short,  are  radically  opposed  in  their  accounts— implicit  in  the 
one  case,  explicit  in  the  other— of  the  nature  of  perception, 
and  of  cognition  in  general.  The  realistic  epistemological 
monist  agrees  with  the  dualist  at  least  upon  one  point,  and 
in  this  they  maintain  a  common  opposition  to  the  behavior- 
ist— namely,  in  holding  that  consciousness  can  make  us  ac- 
quainted, either  directly  or  indirectly,  with  objects  remote  in 
space  and  in  time,  and  not  merely  with  states  or  movements 
of  our  own  bodies. 

There  has,  it  is  true,  been  propounded  not  long  since  a 
hypothesis  which  has  the  air  of  reconciling  epistemological 
monism    with    something   resembling   beha\dorism.     In    his 
contribution  to  The  New  Realism  Professor  Holt  has  con- 
tended that,  on  the  one  hand,  the  real  external  world  known 
to  science  must  have  all  qualitative  differences  reduced  to 
quantitative    differences    in    space-and-time-characters ;    and 
that,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  reason  to  think  that  tlie 
nerve-processes   in   which   our   sensations   consist   are   vibra- 
tory impulses  having  in  each  case  the  same  rates  of  vibration 
as  the  external  vibrations  in  which  colors,  sounds,  etc.  '  ob- 
jectively '  consist.     Both  these  things  being  admitted,  a  sen- 
sation could  be  identified  with  a  bodily  motion,  and  this 
motion  would  be  the  same — i.  e.,  would  be  describable  by  the 
same   formula — as   the   extra-corporeal   motions  giving  rise 
to   it.     Unfortunately  this  short  and  easy  method  is  con- 
fronted with  two  awkward  facets.     Its  generalization  about 
the  periodicities  of  nerve-impulses  seems  to  be  a  more  than 
dubious  piece  of  physiology;  and   in  any  case,  the  actual 
content  of  our  perception  is  not  composed  merely  of  quan- 
titatively diverse   vibrations,   but  of   qualities— reds,   blues, 
sounds,  smells,  etc.     It  can  not  possibly,  therefore,  be  iden- 


74 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[210 


211] 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


75 


tical  with  a  series  of  qualityless  processes,  either  within  or 
withoiJt  our  bodies.     It  should  be  added  that  the  author  of 
this  speculation  himself  finally  affirms  epistemological  mon- 
ism in  a  way  which  negates  the  theory  of  knowledge  involved 
in  any  thorough-going  behaviorism.     For  he  declares  that,  m 
spite  of  what  the  theory  just  outlined  might  seem  to  imply, 
consciousness,  when  localized  at  all,  "  is  not  in  the  skull "  or 
anywhere  else  in  the  body,  '*  but  is  'out  there'   precisely 
wherever  it  appears  to  be''— i.  e.,  wherever  its  objects  are. 
Th/ough  there  is  obviously  a  "  connection  between  modifica- 
tions of  the  nervous  system  and  changes  in  consciousness, 
this  connection  can  be  in  other  ways  tlian  that  of  a  spatial 
inclusion  of  consciousness  by  the  nervous  system."     What  is 
in  consciousness  when  one  sees  a  colored  object  is  "  that  color 
f   out  there  "  which  "  is  *  on  '  a  particular  object."     But,  since 
I    one's  'behavior'  certainly  cannot  be  'out  there,'  this  can 
only  mean  that  there  is  something  more   to  consciousness 
than  behavior— that  it  by  some  means  or  other  knows  objects 
external  to  the  body,  and  '  gets  at '  them,  even  across  great 
gulfs  of  intervening  space.     Thus  the  monistic  or  neo-real- 
istic  theory  of  perception  and  radical  behaviorism  still  re- 
main unreconciled. 

This  should  suffice  for  making  clear  the  relations  of  these  new 
movements  in  psychological  theory  to  the  type  of  epistemolo- 
gical doctrine  under  consideration  in  this  paper.    To  the  criti- 
cism of  radical  behaviorism  I  do  not  propose  on  this  occasion 
to  devote  any  space;  I  need,  for  present  purposes,  only  say 
that  in  what  follows  it  is  assumed  that,  with  respect  to  the 
point  at  which  both  epistemological  monism  and  dualism  are 
in  conflict  with  behaviorism,  the  general  position  of  the  two 
former  doctrines  is  the  only  tenable  one — in  other  words, 
^    that  perceiving  and  knowing  objects,  whatever  else  these 
!     transactions  prove  to  be,  can  certainly  not  be  adequately  for- 
mulated in  terms  of  behavior  and  treated  as  purely  intra- 
corporeal  events.     We  may,  therefore,  now  return  to  our  prin- 
cipal theme,  and  attempt  to  enumerate  and  to  examine  the 


logical  motives  which  have  had  the  chief  part  in  inspiring 
the  contemporary  revolt  against  the  belief  in  ideas. 

The  movement  has  in  the  main,  as  we  have  seen,  been"'' 
incidental  to  a  revival  of  realism;  it  is  primarily  to  be  under- 
^^^^13^^  ^^^mmm  of_a .  re^ctigji^^against  Tl^SJiii^ism 
^_^^^^i.?^-J^^^-y?9i  is-suppo^ed  by  many  to  be  identified. 
xT^mplete  analysis  of  the  sources  of  the  tendency  IS  which 
we  are  here  interested  would,  accordingly,  make  necessary 
an  examination  of  the  reasons  which  have,  after  the  long 
dominance  of  idealism  of  one  sort  or  another,  brought  realism 
back  into  fashion  even  among  academic  philosophers.     But 
that  is  too  large  an  inquiry  to  be  entered  upon  here.     For 
present  purposes  it  suffices  to  recall  the  fact  that  the  cur- 
rent denial  of  the  existence  of  mental  representations  has 
for  the  most  part  been  generated  in  the  course  of  an  attempt 
to  reformulate  and  to  justify  a  thorough-going  realism— 
which  includes  not  only  physical,   but  also  something  ap- 
proximating the   Platonic,  realism.     This,  however,   by  no 
means  explains  the  prevailing  drift  towards  epistemological 
monism,  since  one  of  the  familiar  forms  of  realism,  perhaps 
the  commonest  philosophical  form  of  it,  is  dualistic,  and 
affirms  the  existence  of  both  ideas  and  extra-mental  things. 
The  first  of  the  papers  in  this  Circular  defends  a  realism 
of  this  type.     It  is,  tjierefore,  into  the  reasons  which  have 
given  so  much  of  the  realism  of  our  time  a  monistic  turn, 
that  we  have  here  to  inquire. 

(1)  One  of  the  causes  of  the  reaction,  clearly,  is  to  be 
found  in  a  once  prevalent  confusion  about  the  meaning  of 
'  consciousness '  and  the  relation  of  the  belief  in  its  existence 
to  the  belief  in  the  existence  of  ideas.  And  for  this  con- 
fusion the  philosophers  of  the  past  who  have  held  the  latter 
belief  have  been  largely  responsible.  They  have  often  tended  to 
mean  by  consciousness  both  that  mode  or  that  realm  of  being 
in  which  ideas  subsist,  and  also  that  supposed  introspectively 
discoverable  entity— quite  distinct  from  ordinary  perceptual 
or  ideational  or  affective  content— about  whose  reality  I  ex- 


7G 


On  the  Exigence  of  Ideas 


[212 


\ 


pressed  doubts  at  the  outset  of  this  inquiry.     Consciousness 
thus  came  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of  directly,  though 
only  inwardly,  observable  stuff  or  menstruum,  in  which  ideas 
observably  floated;  and  the  fortunes  of  the  supposition  that 
ideas  exist  were  thus  unhappily  linked  with  the  fortunes  of 
the  doctrine  that  this  kind  of  consciousness  exists  and  is 
observable.     When,  therefore,  James  and  other  hitter-day  phi- 
losopliers  began  to  be  sceptical  about  this  supposed  peculiar 
consciousness-fluid,  they  not  unnaturally  proceeded  to  throw 
out  the  baby  with  the  batli— since  they  had  long  been  given  to 
understand  that  the  baby's  existence  was  inseparable  from 
that  of  the  bath.     The  assumption,  however,  was  an  entirely 
mistaken  one.     The  question  about  the  existence  of  ideas  is 
independent  of  the  question  about  the  verifiable  actuality  of 
consciousness  as  a  unique  introspectible  datum  not  reducible 
to  mere  content.     The  former  question   is  primarily  this: 
does  any  (or  all)  content  present  in  the  sense-perceptions  or 
thoughts  of  individuals  have  an  other  than  physical  exist- 
ence?    Xow  physical  existence  is— at  least  within  the  limits 
of  the  realistic  hypothesis— a  comparatively  simple  and  clearly 
definable  notion^     An  existent  is  said  to  be  physical  if  it  is 
itself   extended,   if  it   has   a    locus   in  a   three-dimensional 
space  which  is  piMic  (t.  e.,  within  which  the  objects  of  other 
percipients  also  have  their  loci),  and  if  it  possesses  energy, 
or  is  a  portion  of  some  form  of  energ\',  and  "  enters  as  a 
factor  into  the  executive  order  of  the  material  world."     Pro- 
fessor Stout,  one  of  the  few  writers  on  our  problem  who  ha.^ 
taken  the  precaution  of  defining  ^physical'  and  ^mental,' 
would  add  that  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of  physical  things 
that  no  two  of  them  can  at  the  same  moment  occupy  the 
same  portion  of  space  '-—L  e.,  of  the  one,  universal,  public 
space.     This  is  certainly  a  postulate  of  common  sense  and 
of  much  of  our  physics,  and  one  which  I  can  not  but  think  a 
necessarv  one.     Yet,  since  it  is,  as  we  have  seen,  doubted  by 


"^Proc.  Ar.  Soc,  ix,  1908-9,  pp.  226-7. 


213] 


Arthur  0,  Lovejotj 


77 


some  physicists  and  denied  by  some  neo-realistic  philosophers, 
and  since  this  denial  is  the  crux  of  much  of  the  controversy 
about  ideas,  it  is  perhaps  more  just  to  refrain  from  putting 
this  postulate  into  our  definition  of  the  physical,  without 
further  qualification  or  argument.  It  is  not  improper,  how- 
ever, to  set  down  this  requirement  of  single  space-occupancy 
as  an  element  in  one  of  the  common  meanings  of  '  physical ' ; 
and  to  ask  those  who  deny  the  existence  of  ideas  whether 
they  do  or  do  not  accept  this  meaning,  and  if  not,  how  they 
justify  their  belief  in  multiple  space-occupancy. 

The  existence  of  ideas,  then,  means  the  existence,  in  a  per- 
ceptual field,  of  content  which  can  not  be  regarded  as  physi- 
cal, in  the  sense— or,  with  respect  to  the  last-mentioned  point, 
in  one  or  tlie  other  of  the  two  alternative  senses— just  indi- 
cated. But  if  ideas  can  be  shown  so  to  exist,  it  would  follow 
that,  in  an  equally  definite  sense,  consciousness  exists  also — 
namely,  as  the  realm  of  being  '  in '  which  non-physical  con- 
tent is. 

(2)  Another  old  confusion  contributory  to  the  genesis 
of  the  revolt  against  ideas  attaches  to  the  term  '  subjective.' 
By  the  '  subject '  of  consciousness  is  usually  meant  some 
central,  unifying  point  of  reference  which  it  is  thought  neces- 
sary to  assume  as  the  explanation  of  the  individuation  of 
complexes  of  content,  as  the  focus  through  their  common 
relation  to  which  the  elements  of  a  perceptual  field  get  their 
''  unique  sort  of  togetherness."  In  this  sense  the  '  subject,' 
or  Ego,  is  antithetic  to  '  the  object  '—to  the  concrete  content, 
possessing  definite  sensible  or  other  qualities,  which  is  over 
against  it  and  is  '  for '  it,  or  '  belongs  to  '  it.  But  if  the  con- 
trast of  '  subjective '  and  '  objective '  be  taken  as  parallel  in 
meaning  to  this  subject-object  polarity,  it  is  undeniable  that 
710  perceptual  or  thought  content  is  subjective.  It  is  of  the 
essence  of  the  antithesis  that  all  determinate  objects  of  con- 
sciousness shall,  as  Schuppe  has  put  it,  not  be  in  den  Ich- 
Punht  hineingesetzt,  but  shall  be  conceived  to  be  external 
to  the  subject.     Even  the  things  beheld  in  dreams  or  hallu- 


78 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[214 


cinations  are,  in  this  sense,  wholly  objective;  they,  not  less 
than  true  physical  entities,  stand  in  the  ^  over-against '  rela- 
tion to  the  Ego — whatever  else  may  be  meant  by  that  term. 
But  this,  again,  proves  nothing  against  the  existence  of  ideas 
as  actually  given  content  of  a  non-physical  sort, — or,  again, 
as  content  which  is  not  objective  in  the  quite  different  sense 
of  being  identically  the  same  existent  in  the  consciousness- 
complexes  of  different  subjects. 

(3)  The  believers  in  ideas  have  not  infrequently  argued 
that,  since  ideas,  if  they  exist,  must  be  ^in  the  mind,'  and 
since  the  mind  is  inextended  and  immaterial,  ideas  also  must 
be  inextended  and  destitute  of  the  sensible  qualities  which 
material  objects  are  supposed  to  possess.  But  if  by  ^  ideas ' 
we  are  to  mean  the  content  of  perception  or  thought,  this 
conclusion  is  manifestly  inadmissible.  For  the  content  con- 
sists (in  part)  of  sensible  qualities  having  a  spatial  configu- 
ration and  spatial  magnitude.  Inasmuch  as  what  I  see  is  a 
rectangular  brown  desk,  and  inasmuch  also  as  what  I  see  is 
supposed  (by  the  representationalist)  to  be  immediately 
present  to  me  merely  as  a  sensation  or  idea,  it  necessarily 
follows  that  the  idea  must  be  described  as  brown  and  rect- 
angular. That  such  a  way  of  describing  it  seems  to  many 
paradoxical  can  only  be  due  to  their  confusing  the  notion  of 
'sensing' — {.  e.,  the  process  supposed  to  be  involved  in  the 
apprehension  of  sense-content — with  the  notion  of  sense-con- 
tent itself,  both  of  which  notions  have  commonly  been  ex- 
pressed by  the  single  word  '  sensation.'  There  has  been  a 
similar  confusion  arising  out  of  the  ambiguity  of  the  words 
perception  and  thought,  which  have,  respectively,  stood  in- 
differently for  perceiving  or  thinking,  and  also  for  the  con- 
tent perceived  or  thought.  Xow  the  processes  of  sensing  or 
perceiving  or  thinking,  if  it  be  necessary  to  assume  their  ex- 
istence, must  doubtless  (unless  by  the  behaviorist)  be  re- 
garded as  non-spatial  and  as  destitute  of  sensible  qualities. 
My  thinking  of  the  desk  evidently  ought  not  to  be  described 
as  a  brown  and  rectangular  thinking.     It  is,  then,  this  view 


215] 


Arthur  0.  Lovei 


ejoy 


79 


about  mental  processes  which  has,  through  the  confusion 
indicated,  been  improperly  applied  to  mental  content. 
When  the  confusion  is  corrected,  it  becomes  clear  that  ideas 
can  no  longer  be  considered  entities  of  so  ghostly  a  sort  as  ' 
they  have  often  been  supposed  to  be.  Their  attributes  are  in  ' 
large  part  of  precisely  the  same  type  as  the  attributes  im- 
puted to  '  things.'  They  are  usually  extended  and  they  have, 
or  may  have,  all  manner  of  sensible  properties.  The  critics 
of  the  belief  in  ideas  have  been  wont  to  point  this  out;  and 
they  have  passed  somewhat  easily  from  this  true  proposition 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  so-called  ideas  are  nothing  but 
'  things.'  This  transition  in  the  argument  is  well  illustrated 
by  a  few  sentences  from  the  article  in  which  Woodbridge 
attempts  to  show  the  groundlessness  of  the  belief  in  sen- 
sations. 

One  does  not  ordinarily  or  readily  believe  that  his  consciousness 
or  his  mind  is  made  up  of  colors,  tastes,  sounds,  smells,  and  the 
like.  Indeed,  most  well-trained  and  scientifically  minded  persons 
experience  a  shock  if  they  are  told  that  consciousness  is  so  con- 
stituted. They  may  be  willing  to  admit  that  they  are  conscious 
only  when  they  see  or  hear  or  perform  some  similar  operation,  but 
they  find  consciousness  unrecognizable  when  told  that  it  is  made 

up  of  what  they  see  and  hear.     The  psychologist ig  under  the 

serious  obligation  of  showing  by  what  right  he  regards  the  dis- 
tinctively qualitative  characters  of  these  objects  as  sensations,  men- 
tal elements,  mental  functions  or  mental  processes;  by  what  right 
he  regards  as  conscious  or  mental  anything  whatsoever  which  is 
characteristic  of  the  object."^' 

The  last  sentence  here,  perhaps,  involves  the  confusion 
noted  in  the  previous  section  (2).  One  sense  in  which  the 
sensible  qualities  presented  in  perception  are  undeniably 
"characteristic  of  the  object"  is  that  they  belong  to  the 
object-side  of  the  subject-object  relation.  This,  however,  as 
we  have  seen,  by  no  means  establishes  their  objectivity.  But 
Woodbridge's  main  point  in  the  passage  quoted  evidently  is 


""The  Belief  in  Sensations,"  Jour,  of  Philosophy,  x,  1913,  p.  004. 


80 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[216 


/ 


that  the  data  said  to  be  '  in  the  mind '  have  qualities  essen- 
tially like  those  of  objects  not  in  the  mind,  are  indistin- 
guishable from  what  one  means  by  objects,  and  ought  not, 
therefore,  to  be  classified  as  mental. 

If,  however,  'mental'  means  'non-physical,'  the  conclu- 
sion,' it  is  plain,  does  not  follow  from  the  premises.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  fact  that  sensory  content  is  spatial  to  show 
that  it  is  '  in  space '— i.  e.,  once  more,  in  that  single,  public 
.pace  in  which,  presumably,  the  '  real  things '  of  the  realist 
have  their  location.  And  there  is  nothing  in  the  fact  that 
certain  sensory  content  presents  the  same  sort  of  qualities 
as  the  realist's  physical  objects  are  supposed  to  possess,  to 
show  that  that  content  is  itself  composed  of  physical  objects. 
If,  indeed,  there  were  no  reasons  for  hesitating  to  identify 
the  private  or  subjective  spaces  in  which  our  sense-data  pri- 
marily appear  with  'objective'  space,  or  for  hesitating  to 
identify  all  qualitative  content  presented  in  consciousness 
with  similarly  qualified  entities  supposed  to  exist  quite  out- 
side of  consciousness,  we  might  properly  make  these  identifi- 
cations, in  the  interest  of  intellectual  economy.  But  there 
are,  as  we  have  already  seen,  definite  and  positive  reasons 
why  we  should  hesitate  to  do  this. 

(4)  The  distinction  between  processes  and  content  has, 
as  I  have  just  now  remarked,  been  especially  emphasized  by 
some  of  the  antagonists  of  the  doctrine  of  ideas;  and  several 
important  representatives  of  epistemological  monism  have 
expressly  affirmed  the  reality  of  mental  processes,  while  de- 
nying that  any  mental  content  exists.  This  conception  of 
consciousness  or  awareness  as  a  pure  operation  untouched 
by  the  attributes  of  the  things  with  which  it  is  concerned, 
has  been  ingeniously  utilized  by  some  recent  writers  as  a 
means  of  escape  from  certain  of  the  usual  objections  brought 
against  the  monistic  theory  of  perception.  It  has  been  em- 
ployed by  none  more  ingeniously  or  skilfully  than  by  Pro- 
fessor Dunlap,  in  his  paper  printed  in  this  Circular. 

My  perceiving  or  thinking,  it  is  argued,  is  doubtless  always 


117] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


81 


an  event  having  a  determinate  date.     It  occurs  at  this  or  at 
that  moment,  and  can  be  said  to  have  being  only  in  those 
moments.     But,  since  it  is  a  very  different  type  of  reality 
from  the  objects  perceived  or  thought,  there  is  no  reason 
why  its  date  and  place  and  their  dates  and  places  should 
coincide.     Thought  as  a  process  or  activity  has  for  its  dis- 
tinctive characteristic  a  power  of  reaching  beyond  temporal 
and  spatial  limits.     While  each  concrete  instance  of  it  must 
exist  at  a  now  and  (in  a  sense)  a  here,  it  frequentlv  operates 
upon,  finds  its  objective  in,  the  not-now  and  the*^  not-here. 
Cognitive  consciousness  thus,  in  all  its  phases,  is  pictured  as 
resembling  a  search-light  which  can  throw  its  beam  freely 
forward  and  back,  and  illuminate  many  things  which  are 
not  where  it  is— things  distant  in  time  as  well  as  in  space. 
There  need,  therefore,  be  no  present  content  for  my  present 
consciousness.     Thus  the  paradox  which,  earlier  in  this  paper, 
was  noted  as  a  reproach  against  epistemological  monism- - 
that  it  compels  us  in  certain  cases  to  conceive  ^^  of  a  thing 
as  now  existing  which  is  at  the  same  time  known  not  now 
to  exist— disappears ;  and  it  becomes  unnecessary  to  invoke 
ideas  to  act  as  present  attorneys  for  defunct  objects. 

Lest  this  reasoning  be  found  convincing  by  some,  it  is  well 
to  begin  such  brief  comment  upon  it  as  I  have  space  for  by 
observing  that  this  device,  even  if  found  workable,  can  be 
applied  to  only  one  of  the  difficulties  in  the  path  of  the 
epistemological  monist.  It  does  nothing  to  remove  the  ob-  • 
jections  based  upon  the  apparent  occurrence  in  consciousness 
of  a  great  mass  of  content  of  various  sorts  which  it  is  impos- 
sible to  regard  as  physical,  to  find  room  for  in  '  real '  space 
or  to  credit,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  expression,  with  objective 
actuality. 

There  are,  moreover,  reasons  for  doubting  whether  the 
device  is  workable  even  for  the  limited  purpose  for  which  it 
IS  proposed  to  employ  it.     The  most  radical  of  these  reasons 


14 


See  page  57,  above. 
6 


82 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[218 


though  perhaps  not  the  one  which  will  most  readily  command 
assent,  is  the  fact  that  one  may  well  doubt  whether,  in  the 
sense  required,  '  thinking '  or  '  perceiving '  exists  at  all.  I 
do  not  mean  to  deny  that,  in  voluntary  attention  and  other 
forms  of  conation,  we  have  in  our  experience  something  that 
may  properly,  though  not  without  risk  of  equivocality,  be 
called  mental  activity.  But  when  conative  processes  are  dis- 
tinguished from  presentative  and  cognitive  ones— from  per- 
ceiving and  thinking — and  are  set  to  one  side,  I  do  not  myself 
discover  what  there  is  left  on  the  other  side  to  be  called  a 
mental  operation.     What  I  seem  to  discover,  when  perception 

.occurs,  is  not  a  perceiving,  but  a  certain  complex  of  content, 

/  which  is  subject  to  constant  change,  either  gradual  or  abrupt. 

'  '  Perception '  signifies,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  simply  that  these 
content-complexes   arise   and   have   the   particular   mode   of 

.being  (whatever  it  is  finally  held  to  be)  which  constitutes 
'  being-in-consciousness.'  We  have  just  the  same  amount  and 
sort  of  reason  for  being  sceptical  about  '  consciousness '  in 
this  sense  as  we  have  for  being  sceptical  about  that  indefin- 
able consciousness-stuff,  distinct  from  all  its  content,  whicti 
we  have  seen  William  James  attacking  at  the  very  beginning 
of  the  new  'revisionist'  movement  in  Anglo-American  phi- 
losophy and  psychology.  Neither  consciousness-stuff  nor  con- 
sciousness-process is  introspectively  discoverable;  what  is  so 
classified  proves  always,  upon  close  scrutiny,  to  be  merely 
a  certain  kind  of  qualitatively  determinate  content.  And  no 
clear  reason  is  offered  for  inferring  the  existence  of  such 
entities,  when  introspection  fails  to  disclose  them.  Even 
though,  moreover,  the  existence  of  a  'thinking'  irreducible 
to  anvthinff  thought  could  be  inferred,  it  would  assuredly 
remain  a  very  obscure  and  elusive  sort  of  being,  hard,  if  not 
impossible  to  define  without  making  of  it  a  piece  of  thought- 
content  ;  and  therefore  far  too  vague  and  little  known  a  thing 
to  be  coniidently  used  as  a  key  to  one  of  the  principal  prob- 
lems of  the  epistemolog}'  of  perception. 

Again— supposing  that  there  is  a  thinking  or  awareness. 


219J 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


83 


verifiably  actual  and  wholly  distinct  from  any  object  of  wliicii 
we  are  aware-can  it,  after  all,  be  held  that  this  operates 
without  any  content  contemporaneous  with  itself?    Does  the 
reader's  introspection  attest  that  when  he  recalls  the  scenes 
of  his  childhood,  the  only  item  which  can  be  said  to  form 
a  part  of  his  present  experience  is  just  a  pure  awareness- 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  that  it  is  aware  of?    Is  there  nothing 
in  consciousness  now  which  stands  for  that  by-gone  reality/ 
which  the  experience  refers  to  and  in  some  sense  renews"' 
Must  we  say  that  there  is  absolutely  no  re-presentation  of 
vanished  objects  or  past  experiences?    The  writer    at  all 
events,  finds  himself,  upon  attempting  to  analyze  his  own 
memory-phenomena,  quite  unable  to  give  an  affirmative  ans- 
wer to  these  questions.     Professor  Dunlap,  it  should  be  noted 
does  not  give  an  unqualifiedly  affirmative  answer  to  them' 
either.     He  recognizes  that  certain  content  is  in  these  cases 
temporally  coincident  with  the  thinking  process.     But  that 
content,  he  finds,  is  not  images  of  the  not-present  objects, 
but  muscle-sensations.     That  this  description  of  the  content 
in  question  is,  for  a  great  part  of  it,  entirely  correct,  I  do 
not  doubt.     My  memory  of  the  road  home  from  my  first 
school-house  is,  doubtless,  largely  conditioned  by,  if  not  redu- 
cible to,  partial  revivals  of  the  sensations  connected  with  the 
muscular  movements  of  the  eye,  and  other  portions  of  the 
body,  which  I  experienced  when  I  so  often  saw  and  walked 
that  road;  and  it  is  reenforced  by  the  kinaesthetic  sensations 
connected  with  the  incipient  vocalization  of  the  names  of  the 
objects  which  were  perceived  there.    But  it  is  needful  to  add 
that  these  sensations,  now  present,  do,  after  all,  contrive 
somehow  to  take  on  a  representative  character.    It  cannot  be 
denied  that  they  in  some  fashion  stand  for  the  not-present 
-and,  in  part,  no  longer  existent-objects.     They  are  such 
for  example,  as  to  enable  me-if  I  had  any  skill  as  a  draughts- 
man-to  make  a  picture  of  some  of  those  objects.     But  how 
It  1  have  not  at  present  in  consciousness  some  of  the  elements 
of  that  picture,  is  it  possible  for  me  at  present  to  put  it  upon 


84 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[220 


\ 


paper?  The  picture  is  confessedly  an  image  of  the  absent 
reality ;  does  it  not  presuppose  some  sort  of  contemporaneous 
mental  image  of  that  reality  ? 

Finally,  one  may  recall  the  fact  that  a  large  part  of  what 
is  called  our  mental  activity  is  a  dealing  in  futures;  and  that 
a  great  part  of  this  part  is  concerned  with  futures  that  aro 
never  realized.  But  when  ought  we  to  say— in  order  to 
adapt  our  language  to  the  conception  just  now  under  con- 
sideration—that the  things  which  we  foresee,  but  foresee 
'  erroneously,  exist.  The  search-light  of  consciousness  would 
seem  to  have  the  odd  property  of  lighting  up  objects  which 
'aren't  there;  yet,  since  they  undeniably  do  get  illuminated, 
they  must  be  somewhere  and  somewhen.  Is  it  not  the  sim- 
plest thing  to  say  of  them  that  they  have  such  existence  as 
they  do  actually  possess  only  at  the  time  when  the  search- 
light is  turned  upon  them— not  at  that  later  time  when  both 
they  and,  it  may  be,  the  search-light,  exist  neither  in  the 
objective  world  nor  in  anybody's  consciousness?  But  if  we 
say  this  of  them,  we  have  found  in  them  a  class  of  contents 
which  exist  synchronously  with  the  consciousness  of  them, 
yet  are  not  physical  existents  at  that  (or  any  other)  time, 
and  are,  when  present,  not  referred  to  the  time  at  which  they 

are  present. ^^ 

(5)  A  still  more  important  part  in  the  production  of 
contemporary  epistemological  monism  has  been  played  by  the 
discovery — if  a  thing  so  obvious  can  be  called  a  discovery — 
by  several  writers  at  once,  of  the  possibility  of  conceiving  of 
consciousness  as  a  relation,  and  a  relation  of  the  sort  called 
*  external/  i.  e.,  not  constitutive  of  the  terms  related.  The 
clear  and  undisputable  fact  about  perception,  as  we  saw  at  the 
outset,  the  fact  from  which  all  discussion  of  our  problem 
must  begin,  is  that  things  when  perceived  are  'in'  some- 
thing or  other  which  they  are  not  in  when  not  perceived. 


"The  point  in   Dunlap's  paper  here  touched  upon   is,  of  course, 
closely  related  to  another.    The  latter  is  considered  below. 


221] 


Arthur  0,  Lovejoy 


85 


This  has,  in  the  past,  led  people  to  think  of  that  which  these 
things  are  in— to  which  the  name  of  '  consciousness '  or  '  the 
mind '  has  been  given— as  a  kind  of  receptacle ;  and  since  it 
could  not  be  regarded  as  a  spatial  receptacle— inasmuch  as 
the  entrance  of  things  into  consciousness  certainly  does  not 
consist  in  their  being  gathered  into  a  particular  space— it 
lias  been  supposed  to  be  inextended  and  immaterial.     And 
then,  if  the  things  were  to  be  '  in '  this  kind  of  receptacle  or 
region  of  being,  they  must  manifestly  be  despatialized  and 
"  evaporated  into  ideas."     Some  course  of  reasoning  like  this, 
undoubtedly,  has  helped  to  produce  both  the  belief  in  ideas, 
and  the  belief   (already  considered  in  another  connection) 
in  their  non-spatial  character  and  their  entire  freedom  from 
all  the  qualities  of  physical  things.     But,  it  has  occurred  to 
recent  thinkers  to  remark,  in  order  that  things  should  be 
conceived  as  now  in,  and  now  not  in,  a  somewhat,  it  is  not 
necessary  that  that  somewhat  should  be  a  receptacle,  or  a 
'  region  of  existence,'  or  a  logical  genus;  it  may  be  a  relation 
(and  not  necessarily  a  spatial  or  temporal  or  whole-and-part 
relation).     If,  then,  consciousness  be  defined  as  a  relation, 
the  'withinness'   and   'unique  togetherness'  which  distin- 
guish perceived  from  uiiperceived  things  is  duly  recognized; 
and  the  supposed  necessity  of  translating  things  into  ideas  ' 
before  they  are  capable  of  coming  within  consciousness  is 
found  to  be  non-existent.     Things  do  not  enter  into  new 
relations  solely  by  begetting  duplicates  of  themselves;  they 
may  enter  in  their  own  right,  and  even  without  any  alteration 
or  loss  of  their  qualities  and  their  other,  more  permanent, 
relations. 

Much  emphasis,  for  example,  was  laid  upon  the  significant 
possibilities  of  the  conception  of  relation  for  the  problem  of 
perception  by  James,  in  his  celebrated  paper  of  ten  years  ago, 
to  which  reference  has  more  than  once  been  made.  The  'ob- 
jective '  room  and  the  room  that  is  in  consciousness,  are  the 
same  fact  viewed  in  two  different  contexts;  there  is  a  real 
duality  of  '  things '  and  '  thought,'  but  it  is  a  duality  of  re- 


86 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[222 


223] 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


87 


lations,  not  of  existence  or  of  qualities.  If  the  experience 
of  the  room  "  were  a  place  of  intersection  of  two  processes, 
which  connected  it  with  different  groups  of  associates  re- 
spectively, it  could  be  counted  twice  over,  as  belonging  to 
either  group,  and  spoken  of  loosely  as  existing  in  two  places, 
although  it  would  remain  all  the  time  a  numerically  single 
thing."  And  this,  James  declared,  is  precisely  what  we  find 
to  be  the  case  with  regard  to  any  of  the  contents  of  percep- 
tion or  of  thought.  The  dualism  of  the  dualistic  realist,  he 
implied,  has  been  partly  generated  by  a  failure  to  heed  the 
possibility  of  this  combination  of  relational  duality  with  exis- 
tential identity.  Other  writers  have  made  enormous  use  of 
this  distinction,  and  our  American  neo-realism  could  scarcely 
have  developed  without  it. 

It  seems,  however,  hardly  worth  while  to  discuss  at  length 
this  element  in  tlie  production  of  contemporary  epistemolo- 
gical  monism.  For  the  principle  in  question — which  hardly 
needed  discovery — is  doubtless  true,  but  manifestly  inoonclu- 
sive  of  the  issue  concerning  the  existence  of  ideas.  That  a 
thing's  '  being  in  consciousness '  conceivably  may  he  a  case 
merely  of  the  presence  of  the  one  real  object  in  a  special  rela- 
tion, is  scarcely  deniable.  The  question,  however,  is  not  one 
of  possibility  but  of  fact;  and  to  that  question  we  shall  do 
well  to  return.  There  has,  I  cannot  but  think,  been  in  the 
recent  movement  of  opposition  to  the  belief  in  ideas,  some 
haste  in  passing  from  the  argument  that  consciousness,  or 
that  which  perceptual  content  is  in,  might  conceivably  be 
regarded  as  an  external  relation,  to  the  conclusion  that  it  is 
such  a  relation  and  cannot  be  conceived  to  be  anything  else. 

(6)  A  consideration  which  has  appeared  to  some  minds 
to  be  highly  unfavorable  to  the  belief  in  ideas  is  its  apparent 
irrelevancv  and  functionlessness  in  relation  to  all  the  con- 
Crete  problems  of  positive  science.  This  seems  to  have  played 
an  especially  large  part  in  determining  the  philosophical 
position  of  Professor  Woodbridge,  whose  influential  role  in 
the  movement  of  thought  here  dealt  with  has  already  been 


I 


indicated.  Woodbridge  has  objected,  indeed,  not  merely  to 
the  representationalist's  or  the  idealist's  proposed  solutions 
of  the  epistemological  problem  of  perception,  but  to  the 
supposition  that  there  is  any  epistemological  problem  of  per- 
ception which  requires  to  be  solved.  The  problem,  Wood- 
bridge  appears  to  think,  is  a  redundant  one,  simply  because 
the  scientific  investigators  who  are  engaged  in  actually  add- 
ing to  the  sum  of  our  information  find  themselves  in  no  need 
of  any  preliminary  dabbling  in  epistemology. 

The  astronomer,  the  biologist,  the  chemist,  the  historian,  the  stu- 
dent of  literature  ....  are  all  engaged  in  increasing  our  knowledge 
of  what  our  perceptions  are  and  how  they  are  related  to  one  another. 
Their  studies  are  not  prefaced  by  an  examination  of  how  we  per- 
ceive.  They  take  their  material  as  so  much  given  stuff,  and  then 
proceed  to  tell  us  what,  when  so  taken,  they  perceive  it  to  be.  If 
they  are  invited  first  to  examine  the  mechanism  of  perception,  they 
regard  the  invitation  as  impertinent  and  irrelevant.  They'  have 
found  such  an  examination  to  be  unnecessary,  and  so  believe  that 
they  can  riglitfully  reject  it." 

In  short,  ''  the  results  of  modern  intellectual  inquiry ''  have 
been  built  up  ''  directly  from  considering  the  processes  of  per- 
ception, and  also  the  results  of  those  processes,  ....  with- 
out seeking  any  epistemological  warrant  for  our  procedure.'' 
We  may,  no  doubt,  apply  to  all  this  body  of  knowledge  an 
epistemological  scrutiny.     But  we  thereby  alter  that  body  in 
no  particular.     "  If  we  ask  what  service  this  scrutiny  per- 
forms, we  seem  compelled  to  answer  that  the  service  is  not 
logical,  but  moral  and  spiritual.     It  does  not  modify  knowl- 
edge.    It  modifies  character.     It  does  not  give  us  new  or 
increased  information  about  our  world  whereby  that  world 
may  be  more  effectively  controlled.     It  gives  us  rather  con- 
siderations the  contemplation  of  which  is  more  or  less  satis- 
fying to  the  spirit.''  ^^ 


i«  <•' 


"Perception  and  Epistemology,"  in  Essays  .  . 
William  James,  1908,  p.   142. 
"Ibid.,  pp.  166-7. 


.  in  Honor  of 


88 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[224: 


225] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


89 


As  an  indictment  of  the  epistemological  inquiries  whic^ 
have  contributed  to  the  belief  in  ideas,  all  this,  even  if  its 
truth  were  admitted,  does  not  seem  very  damning.     To  the 
philosopher — unless  he  be,  in  the  narrowest  sense,  a  pragma- 
tist,  which  the  author  just  cited  is  not— the  only  effective 
way  of  ruling  out  a  problem  from  consideration  is  to  show 
either  that  it  is  a  logically  meaningless  problem,  or  else  that 
it  can  antecedently  be  known  to  be  insoluble.     Small  discredit 
^     is  cast  upon  the  attempt  to  solve  it  merely  by  a  proof  that 
\    its  solution  can  not  be  used  for  purposes  for  which  no  intelli- 
gent person  ever  supposed  it  could  be  used.     If  epistemology, 
however  little  it  enlarges  our  knowledge  of  the  particular 
things  we  perceive,  is  able,  by  showing  us  how  we  perceive, 
to  render  a  "  moral  and  spiritual  service,"  it  surely  has  a 
sufficient  reason  for  being.     It  is,  furthermore,  quite  untrue 
that  epistemology  has  been  functionless  in  the  past  history 
of  natural   science.     The  distinction   between  primary  and 
secondary  qualities,  with  the  assertion  of  the  subjectivity  of 
the  latter,  is  one  piece  of  epistemological  theory  about  per- 
ception.    And  it  has  played  a  large  and  useful  part  in  the 
development  of  modern  physics.     It  has  enabled  the  physi- 
cist to  feel  at  ease  in  ignoring  the  whole  problem  of  the  sen- 
sible qualities  of  matter,  as  such,— which,  in  their  concrete, 
purely    qualitative    character,    are    insusceptible    of    mathe- 
matical treatment — and  to  confine  his  attention  to  what  is 
supposed  to  be  the  objective  basis  of  our  sensations, — a  world 
in  which  only  geometrical  and  quantitative,  and  therefore 
commensurable  and  calculable,  attributes  needed  to  be  taken 
into  account.     In  the  seventeenth   century,  when  the  pre- 
suppositions and  general  methodology  of  the  more  funda- 
mental of  our  modern  sciences  were  receiving  their  formula- 
tion, they  received  it  at  the  hands  of  men  who  were  very 
greatly  concerned  with  epistemological  issues,  and  even  with 
the   epistemology    of    perception,    and   who    conceived    both 
inquiries  as  related  phases  of  a  single  endeavor  to  clarify 
and  set  in  order  the  whole  problem  of  knowledge  and  to 
discriminate  its  parts  from  one  another. 


All  this  aside,  moreover,  it  may  be  asked  why  a  general 
indictment  of  the  epistemology  of  perception  should  be  any 
more  damaging  to  one  epistemological  theory  than  another. 
If  the  whole  problem  ought  to  be  avoided,  there  would  ap- 
pear to   be  no  more  occasion  for  realistic   epistemological 
monism  than  for  idealism  or  dualistic  realism.     Yet  there  is 
clearly  some  connection,  in  Woodbridge's  mind,  between  the 
considerations  mentioned  and  a  rejection  of  both  idealism 
and  the  belief  in  representative  ideas.     The  connection,  so 
far  as  I  can  make  it  out,  seems  to  run  as  follows:  Since 
epistemology  cannot  alter  either  the   record   of  our  actual 
perceptions,  or  the  extension  of  our  knowledge  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  actually  perceptible  which  is  achieved  for  us 
by  science;  and  since  the  hypothesis  of  mental  representa- 
tions is  indispensable  to  neither  of  these  two  parts  of  our 
knowledge,  therefore  that  hypothesis,  at  all  events,  is  redun- 
dant and  unprofitable.     On  the  other  hand,  the  hypotheses  that 
there  are  physical  objects  independent  of  perception  and  that 
these  are  what  we  actually  perceive,  do  not  seem  to  be  looked 
upon  by  Woodbridge  as  being  '  epistemological  ^  in  any  repre- 
hensible sense.     Both  these  beliefs  seem  to  rest  with  him 
upon  an  assurance  which  amounts  simply  to  a  prejudgment 
of  both  issues :  viz.  to  the  assurance  that  "  we  cannot  suppose, 
and  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose,  that  by  the  constitution  of 
the  mind  we  are  obliged  to  think  of  things  differently  from 
the  manner  in  which  they  are."  ^^ 

Some  actual  arguments  are,  however,  offered  to  show  that 
the  "two  worlds"  of  epistemological  dualism  are  too  nu- 
merous by  half.  For,  it  is  observed,  if  the  content  of  per- 
ception is  composed  of  ideas,  then  the  ideas  in  perception  are 
precisely  like  the  things  referred  to  by  perception.  "The 
world  we  perceive  may  be  made  only  of  the  stuff  of  con- 
sciousness, but  then  consciousness  is  the  kind  of  stuff  that 
may  be  condensed  into  a  lump  of  sugar  with  which  to  sweeten 


18 


Ihid.,  p.  166. 


90 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[226 


coffee/''  This,  it  will  be  observed,  turns  upon  the  confusion 
already  explained  above  (3).  Thus,  "  even  if  the  two  worlds 
are  numerically  distinct,  they  are  essentially  alike."  But 
if  the  perceived  world  is  essentially  like  the  world  of  things, 
''  it  is  the  kind  of  world  which  might  contain  them,  and 
does  contain  them  continuous  with  itself/'  if  the  things  are 
ever  "given  in  representation." 

A  world,  a  representative  world,  which  can  thus  so  faithfully 
copy,  even  in  part,  another  world  which  is  somehow  its  cause,  would 
appear  to  «ontain  within  itself  all  the  elements  necessary  to  show 
how  process  and  result  are  related  to  each  other,  at  least  '  in  repre- 
sentation.' And  if  '  in  representation,'  then  surely  the  need  of  du- 
plicated worlds  has  disappeared  so  far  as  any  positive  result  for 
knowledge  is  concerned,  for  process  and  result  would  in  that  event, 
be  given  in  a  manner  wherein  their  relation  to  each  other  could  be 
defined.  It  would  appear  artificial  and  strained,  therefore,  if  we 
were  to  continue  to  suppose  that  the  problem  of  the  relation  between 
process  and  result  is  ultimately  of  an  eplstemological  character." 

T  am,  I  confess,  not  sure  precisely  what  reasoning  some  of  the 
language  here  is  intended  to  convey.  What  seems  clear,  how- 
ever, is  that  the  argument  now  is,  not  that  representationalism 
is  untenable  because  epistemology  is  superfluous,  but  that 
epistemology  is  superfluous  because  representationalism  is 
either  (a)  untenable,  or  (b)  logically  indistinguishable  from 
monistic  realism.  If  (b)  is  intended,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  dis- 
cover what  reasons  are  offered  for  accepting  such  an  identi- 
fication of  opposites.  If  (a)  is  what  is  really  meant,  no 
arguments  for  it  seem  to  be  suggested  which  differ  in  prin- 
ciple from  those  elsewhere  examined  in  this  paper. 

(7)  It  is  from  idealism,  and  especially  from  the  older- 
fashioned,  Berkeleian  sort  of  idealism,  that  the  ^  new '  realists 
and  other  eplstemological  monists  of  our  time  have  borrowed 
the  weapons  upon  which  they  seem  most  to  rely,  in  their 
attack  upon  the  belief  in  ideas.  •  For  the  original  philosophi- 
cal form  of  eplstemological  monism  was,  of  course,  none  other 


19 


Ihid.,  ip.  163. 


227] 


Arthur  0.  Love  joy 


91 


than  Berkeley's  theory;  it  long  ago  declared  that  there  is, 
in  our  perception  of  sensible  objects,  no  duality  of  thought 
and  thing.  Adherents  of  that  theory  have  accordini^ly  accu- 
mulated a  store  of  well-worn  objections  against  ^dualistic 
realism,  or  the  doctrine  of  representative  ideas;  and  these 
objections  have  simply  been  taken  over  by  the  monistic  real- 
ists of  to-day  and  turned  to  their  own  uses.  Their  position 
is  that  of  men  who,  while  resolved  to  be  realists  at  all  costs, 
are  for  the  rest  quite  ready  to  accept  most  of  the  reasoning:^ 
which  were  intended,  by  those  who  first  devised  them,  to, 
overthrow  both  dualism  and  realism. 

For  example,  we  have  already  seen  Alexander  arguing  for 
the  objectivity  of  the  secondary  qualities  on  the  ground  that 
they  and  primary  qualities  have  long  since  been  proved  to 
stand  upon  exactly  the  same  footing.     But  the  philosopher 
who  first  professed  to  have  proved  this  was  Bishop  Berkeley 
himself;  and  the  consequence  which  he  drew  from  it  was,  of 
course,  that  the  two  classes  of  sensible  qualities  are  equally 
subjective.     We  have,  again,  seen   Professor  Dunlap  reject 
representationalism  with  some  scorn,  on  the  ground  (among 
others)  that  it  is  a  cumbrous  and  gratuitous  piece  of  "psy- 
chical mechanics."     But  this  was  originally  one  of  the  most 
characteristic  of  the  Berkeleian  criticisms  upon  the  Lockian 
type   of  realism.     The   dualistic   hypothesis,   Berkeley  felt, 
was  a  needlessly  complicated  one;  it  postulated  two  distinct 
and  profoundly  dissimilar  entities,  and  a  peculiar  and,  in- 
deed, incomprehensible  sort  of  relation— at  once  causal' and 
cognitive— between  them,  to  account  im  the  fact  that  one 
entity— namely,  a  sensible  object— appears  within  the  circle 
of  an  individual's  consciousness.     The  simpler,  and  therefore 
more  rational,  hypothesis  was  that  precisely  the  object  that 
appears  is  the  only  object  that  exists.     Our  contemporary 
monistic  realists  have  but  slightly  rearranged  the  terms  of 
the  conclusion  of  this  argument,  so  that  it  reads :  the  object, 
that   (independently)  exists  is  precisely  the  object  that  ap- 
pears.    And  the  adverb  which  I  have  put  in  parenthesis  in 


92 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[228 


this  clause  is  in  certain  cases,  at  least  with  some  writers, 
of  so  obscure  and  ill-determined  a  meaning,  that  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  realistic  and  the  idealistic  kind  of  epis- 
temological  monists  sometimes  becomes  rather  elusive. 

Yet  the  argument  based  merely  upon  the  superior  sim- 
plicity of  the  monistic  theory  of  perception  is,  I  am  afraid, 
hardly  so  serviceable  for  realistic  as  it  is  for  idealistic  uses. 
The  reason  whv  it  is  not  lies  in  the  fact  that,  as  we  have 
repeatedly  had  occasion  to  note,  certain  content  which  is 
in  consciousness  can  not  easily  be  credited  with  '  independ- 
ent '  existence.  It  apparently  is  only  at  the  times  when  it 
is  perceived ;  and  its  qualities  are  such  that,  when  considered 
in  connection  with  other  contents  of  other  consciousness,  it 
seems  incapable  of  assignment  to  public  space  or  to  any 
single,  objective  order  of  nature — such  as  the  realist  neces- 
sarily must  suppose  to  be  '  independently  real.'  In  uther 
words,  it  is  natural  to  say  of  memory-content,  of  after- 
imasjes,  and  the  like,  that  at  least  their  nunc  esse  is  their 
nunc  percipi;  and  of  hallucinatory  and  dream  content  that 
their  esse  is  nothing  but  their  percipi.  If,  however,  a  part 
of  what  appears  in  consciousness  is,  on  these  grounds,  held  to 
be  merely  ideas,  the  suspicion  is  aroused  that,  even  when 
what  is  in  consciousness  is  supposed  to  reveal  external  reali- 
ties, that  which  directly  appears  also  consists  of  ideas.  And 
this  suspicion,  as  we  have  also  seen,  has  long  been  felt  to 
receive  corroboration  from  the  fact  that  the  realist,  at  all 
events,  must  recognize  the  existence  of  a  complicated  physi- 
cal mechanism  intervening  between  the  assumed  object  and 
the  perception  of  it.  But  the  monistic  form  of  realism  re- 
quires us  to  believe  that  the  content  which  is  admittedly 
mediated  through  all  these  elaborate  processes  is  qualitatively 
and  existentially  identical  with  an  entity  which  exists  ante- 
cedently to  and  apart  from  this  mediation. 

Another  form  of  idealistic  argument  against  dualist  ic  real- 
ism which  has  been  taken  over  by  recent  realists,  dwells  upon 
the  peculiar  status  of  the  external,  physical  object  in  the 


229] 


Arthur  0,  Love  joy 


93 


dualistic  scheme.  Its  reality  is  affirmed,  and  yet  we  are  told 
that  it  is  never  immediately  accessible  to  us.  Out  of  a  con-  ' 
tent  of  consciousness  consisting  exclusively  of  ideas,  or  intra- 
mental  objects,  we  are  supposed  to  extract  both  a  concrete 
meaning  for,  and  a  proof  of,  the  assertion  of  the  existence 
of  things,  or  extra-mental  objects.  This,  however, — the  op- 
ponent of  dualism  argues — is  clearly  an  impossibility  ex  de- 
finitione.  We  cannot  conceivably  know  the  nature  or  the 
existence  of  anything  which  is  never  immediately  before  the 
mind,  never  actually  present  in  consciousness  at  all.  Ideal- 
istically  applied,  this  reasoning  obviously  leads  to  the  con- 
clusion that  only  that  which  is  in  the  mind  can  be  known 
to  exist.  But  conjoined  with  the  realist's  assumption  that 
independent,  non-mental  things  are  known  to  exist,  the 
reasoning  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  these  things,  so  far  as 
they  are  known  or  apprehended,  are  immediately  before  the 
mind,  are  actually  present  in  consciousness.^^ 

Here  again,  however,  as  I  have  recently  pointed  out  else- 
where, we  have  a  case  in  which  the  weapons  of  the  idealist 
are  ill  adapted  to  the  warfare  of  the  monistic  realist.  For 
he,  if  he  is  to  be  a  realist  at  all,  is  compelled  to  declare  that 
he  knows  that  things  not  in  consciousness  exist,  and  that  the 
things  now  in  consciousness  exist  at  other  times  outside  of 
that  ^relation.'  This  proposition  would  appear  to  be  mean- 
ingless, unless  it  means  that  things  not  now  in  consciousness 
can  in  some  fashion  now  be  known  or  apprehended.  But, 
manifestly,  the  theory  that  only  tlie  immediately  given  can  be 
knowji  or  verified,  and  the  theory  that  the  existence  of  reali- 
ties not  immediately  given  can  be  known  and  verified,  are 
irreconcilable.  The  latter  is  essential  to  any  view  that  can 
be  called  realistic ;  and  it  destroys  the  premise  of  the  present 
argument  against  dualism.  The  idealist  himself,  of  course, 
if  he  is  not  a  solipsist,  can  not  consistently  adhere  to  the  sup- 


20 


For  an  example  of  the  use  of  this  argument  in  the  monistic 
interest,  cf.  Perry,  in  Jour,  of  Philosophy,  x,  1913,  p.  461.  For  my 
previous  comment  on  this  cf.  id.,  p.  568. 


94 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[230 


posed  axiom  that  no  mediate  knowledge  of  existences  is  pos- 
sible. Bishop  Berkeley,  for  example,  as  everyone  knows,  had 
no  doubt  about  the  existence  of  God  and  of  finite  minds  not 
his  own,  and  therefore  plainly  departed  from  the  epistemolo- 
gical  '  immediatism '  which  served  as  premise  for  much  of 
his  idealistic  argument.  There  is,  as  Montague  has  recently 
remarked,  ''  an  oasis  of  realism  [though  not  necessarily  of 
physical  realism]  somewhere  in  the  mind  of  every  idealist." 
There  is  also,  and  for  exactly  the  same  reason,  an  oasis  of 
dualism,  of  some  sort  of  representationalism,  somewhere  la 
the  min4  of  every  epistemological  monist  who  is  unwilling 
to  accept  the  paradox  that  the  only  known  reality  is  the 
present  content  of  his  private  consciousness.  To  profess  a 
knowledge  of  aught  beyond  this  is  to  concede,  once  for  all, 
the  possibility  that  that  which  is  known  may  be  existentially 
other  than  anything  present  in  consciousness  at  the  time 
when  it  is  known. 

(8)  More  happily  conceived,  for  monistic  uses,  than  these 
injudicious  borrowings  from  idealism  to  which  some  neo- 
realists  have  so  much  resorted,  is  an  argument  employed  by 
Dunlap  in  his  article  in  this  Circular.  It  is  designed  to  con- 
fute the  'representationalist  out  of  his  own  mouth.  The 
dualist — so  runs  the  reasoning — urges,  in  objection  to  episte- 
mological monism,  that  we  can  be  aware,  either  in  perception 
or  thought,  of  a  thing  which  no  longer  exists;  from  which  he 
concludes  that  the  thing  must  be  represented  by  a  present 
idea  of  it.  But,  the  monist  now  replies,  the  dualist  who 
raises  this  objection  himself  professes  to  be  able  to  contrasi: 
this  present  content — sensation  or  percept  or  image — with 
the  not-present  real  object.  His  very  assertion  that  he 
knows  the  percept  to  be  other  than  the  object  implies  that 
he  now  has  the  latter  as  well  as  the  former  *  before  the  mind.' 
But  to  imply  this  is  to  concede  the  falsity  of  his  objection 
to  the  monistic  view,  and  the  needlessness  of  the  belief  that 
content  can  be  nothing  but  ideas.  To  prove — or  even  to 
formulate — the  proposition  that  thoughts  which  are  not  iden- 


231] 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


95 


tical  with  things  can  alone  be  in  consciousness,  he  is  com- 
pelled to  begin  by  admitting  that  both  things  and  thoughts 
can  be  in  consciousness,  and  be  there  distinguished  and  com- 
pared—the premise  thus  contradicting  the  conclusion  which 
IS  drawn  from  it.  Since  the  dualist  must,  first  or  last,  refer 
to  absent  or  no-longer-existent  realities,  he  has  no  right  to 
reproach  the  epistemological  monist  for  doing  so  without 
superfluous  preliminaries. 

This  argument  is  a  genuinely  pertinent  and  a  highly  plaus- 
ible one;  and  it  is  so  because  it  expresses  a  very  natural  view 
about  the  implications  of  the  most  distinctive,  and  yet  the 
most  singular  and  paradoxical,  attribute  of  consciousness- 
its  power  to  apprehend  the  not  present.    It  is,  none  the  less, 
upon  a  misinterpretation  of  those  implications  that  the  argu- 
ment rests.    To  say  that  one  contrasts  one's  idea  of  an  ext^'er- 
nal  and  independent  thing  with  the  thing  itself  is  not  to  say 
that  the  thing  itself  is  directly  given  in  one's  consciousness, 
without  ih^  mediation  of  any  idea.    The  realistic  representa- 
tionalist who  declares  that  he  knows  that  his  representations 
correspond  to  extra-mental  realities  does  not  thereby  necessar- 
ily imply  that  these  latter  are,  at  the  same  time,  actually  pres- 
ent m  his  mind;  he  means,  of  course,  to  imply  the  contrary 
and  he  is  not  debarred  from  doing  so.     The  briefest,  thoucrh' 
the  least  direct,  way  of  showing  that  he  is  not  so  debarred 
consists  in  pointing  out  that  those  who  advance  this  argu- 
ment against  the  necessity  of  the  hypothesis  of  ideas,  them- 
selves distinguish,  in  certain  cases,  between  an  existent  and 
their  thought  of  that  existent,  without  admitting  that  the  ex- 
istent in  question  is  immediately  present  as  a  bit  of  content  in 
their  consciousness.    One  such  case  we  have  already  noted ;  it 
IS  that  of  the  belief  in  the  occurrence,  within  the  consciousness 
of  another  person,  of  content  directly  accessible  only  to  the 
introspection  of  that  person.     Anyone  who,  while  professing 
to  know  that  such  content  exists,  declares  that  its  actual  ex- 
istence is  not  identical   with  anything  existent  in   his  own" 
thought,  makes  precisely  the  same  distinction  as  the  repre- 


9G 


On  the  Existence  of  Ideas 


[232 


sentationalist,  and  is,  in  fact-as  has  already  been  intimated 
—a  representationalist,  so  far  as  this  type  of  existent  is  con- 
cerned. And  in  making  the  distinction  he  does  not,  and  can 
not,  suppose  that  the  content  of  his  fellow's  private  experienca 
after  all  is  identically  present  in  his  own  thought.  The  same 
reasoning  applies  to  those  who  admit  the  reality,  not  of  pri- 
vate content  in  individual  minds,  but  of  a  multitude  of  indi- 
vidual thinkings,  of  processes  of  consciousness.  If  Peter's 
thinking  is  not  John's  thinking,  and  yet  John  professes  to 
know  that  Peter's  thinking  is  a  fact,  and  to  be  himself  think- 
ing about  that  fact,  and  in  doing  so  to  be  discriminating  his 
thinking  about  it  from  the  fact  itself— then  John  clearly  im- 
plies that  a  not-immcdiately-present  reality  may  be  contrasted 
with  a  present  thought  of  it  without  thereby  coming  to  be 
immediately  present.  How  such  a  thing  is  possible  may,  in- 
deed, appear  a  mystery;  but  none  but  the  solipsist  can  deny 

that  it  is  possible. 

Another  example  is  to  be  found  in  the  case  of  memory. 
Of  a  fact  remembered  an  essential  attribute  is  its  pastness; 
the  "  temporal  coefficients,"  as  Mrs.  Franklin  puts  it,  of  ob- 
jects of  consciousness  are  as  distinctive  predicates  of  them  as 
their  sensible  qualities.  But— whatever  be  said  of  the  other 
attributes  of  remembered  experiences,  or  of  objects  wliich 
have  ceased  to  be,— their  pastness  a.s  such  surely  cannot  be  a 
present  existence.  To  contrast,  then,  my  present  thought  of 
the  past  with  the  actual  past,  is,  once  more,  to  make  just  such 
a  distinction  as  is  made  in  contrasting  my  thought  of  an 
entity  outside  of  consciousness  with  that  entity;  and  it  is  to 
make  it  without  implying  either  that  the  present  is  actually 
past  or  the  past  actually  present.  As  little  need,  therefore,  is 
there  to  maintain  that  the  latter  contrast  is  possible  only  upon 
condition  that  what  is  outside  of  consciousness  be  also  inside 
of  it— in  other  words,  that  the  apprehension  of  the  external 
entity  is  direct  and  unmediated  by  ideas. 

What  we  do  in  all  these  cases,  the  believer  in  ideas  may 
intelligibly  and  consistently  maintain,  is  after  all  merely  to 


233] 


Arthur  0.  Lovejoy 


9 


contrast  one  idea  with  another.     There  is  present  content  of 
consciousness,  whicli  is,  in  the  broad  sense  of  the  term,  ideas; 
and  there  are,  amongst  this  content,  ideas  of  the  differenc(3 
between  ideas  and  objects  in  some  sense  or  other  correspond- 
ing to  them.     The  content  includes  such  concepts  as  exter- 
nality, independence,  otherness,  pastness;  and  these  concepts 
may  be  conjoined  with  other  elements  of  content.    When  they 
are  so  conjoined,  we  liave  in  consciousness,  for  example,  the 
idea  of  an  external,  or  an  independent,  or  a  past  reality;' and 
this  idea,  when  present,  has  a  different  meaning  or  logical 
value  from  that  which  the  same  content  has  when  not  united 
with  that  predicate.     Thus  it  is  that  we  can  contrast  given 
content  taken  simpliciter  and  regarded  as  '  ideas '  merely,  I 
with  the  same  content  taken  as  external  or  as  past,  and  re-  ' 
garded  as  distinct  from  present  ideas— and  yet,  throughout 
never  actually  transcend  the  circle  of  our  individual  con- 
sciousness, or  dispense  with  ideas,  or  translate  ourselves  out 
of  the  present.    For  content  to  7nean  externality,  and  for  l^ 
to  he  external,  are  quite  two  things;  just  as  for  it  to  mean  . 
past  event  and  to  be  a  past  event  are  two  things.     Bits  of 
present  experience—to  use  a  metaphor  of  which  Professor 
James  was  fond-^ point'  beyond  their  own  limits;  but  thev 
do  not  get  beyond  their  own  limits,  for  the  pointing  is  itself 
a  part  of  the  present  experience.    And  all  mediate  knowing 
consists  necessarily  of  experiences  of  precisely  this  type. 

That  the  '  self-transcendence '  of  our  thought  need  consist 
m  no  more  than  a  present-pointing-beyond-the-present,   is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  all  the  indicia  upon  which  we  rely  in 
affirming  any  particular  sort  of  transcendence  (such  as  past- 
ness) might  be  given  in  consciousness,  even  though  no  object 
transcending   our  present   consciousness   in   that   particular 
way  existed.     Thus  a  newly  created  mind  might  be  endowed 
with  a  memory;  it  would  have  in  its  consciousness  a  mass 
ol  content  bearing  pastness  as  its  temporal  coefficient    but 
corresponding  to  nothing  whatever  in  any  real  past     If 'it  b- 
objected  that,  supposing  this  to  be  true,  the  truth  of  solipsism 


98 


On  (he  Existence  of  Ideas 


[234 


v.niilf]  also  be  possible,  i.  c.  abstractly  conceivable,  the  an- 
swer must  be  that  the  truth  of  solipsism  is  abstractly  con- 
ceivable. It  would,  however,  upon  the  present  hypothesis,  be 
in  no  wise  logically  inferrible.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have 
already  seen  that,  upon  the  hypothesis  that  all  knowledge 
must  consist  in  the  immediate  presence  of  the  reality  known, 
nothing  but  solipsism  is  inferrible.-^  And  that  is  the  ultimate 
objection  to  all  consistent  epistemological  monism.  Whether 
it  call  itself  realistic  or  idealistic,  it  cannot,  without  abandon- 
ing its  principles,  attach  any  real  meaning  to  the  proposition 
tliat  I  at  present  know  that  which  does  not  at  present  exist; 
n^  to  the  proposition  that  my  knowledge  refers  to  beings 
i>uch  as  other  persons)  whose  existence  never  wholly  coin- 
cides with,  never  is  perfectly  reducible  to,  anything  which  oc- 
curs as  a  datum  within  my  own  experience.  It  is,  after  all, 
Tiinre  satisfactory  to  hold  a  view  which  treats  this  contrast  as 
;i  distinction  between  the  meaning  of  two  ideas  both  present 
i!i  my  consciousness,  than  to  hold  a  view  which,  when  duly 
analyzed,  implies  that  the  contrast  has  no  meaning  at  all. 

It  is  time  to  conclude  this  inquiry,- which  has  run  to  an  un- 
anticipated length.  What  I  have  here  tried  to  do  has  been, 
first,  to  show  the  significance  and  the  historic  relations  of  the 
contemporary  revolt  against  ideas ;  second,  to  define  the  rela- 
tiuns  of  this  revolt  to  certain  kindred,  yet  not  identical,  move- 
ments ;  third,  to  exhibit  the  considerations  which  have  engen- 
dered the  belief  in  ideas,  and  which,  accordingly,  must  be 
disposed  of  by  those  who  repudiate  that  belief;  fourth,  to  make 
i^  evident  that  the  principal  logical  motives  which  have  in- 
si)ired  the  revolt,  while  they  have  been  partially  suggested  by 
confusions  in  the  older  way  of  thinking  about  ideas,  do  not 


"*•  To  save  the  reader  tlie  trouble  of  recalling  a  somewhat  involved 
argument,  the  essential  proof  of  this  conclusion  may  be  here  repeated 
in  a  sentence:  The  epistemological  monist  declares  that  whenever 
ho  perceives  or  thinks  of  a  thing,  that  thing  itself  is  immediatelv 
present  in  consciousness;  it  follows  that  he  can  never  think  of  any- 
tliing  which  is  not  immediately  present  in  consciousness. 


235] 


Arlliur  0.  Lovejoy 


99 


suffice  to  justify  the  conclusion  reached;  and  lastly,  to  point 
out  that  the  attempt  to  conceive  of  all  knewledge  as  '  imme- 
diate,' and  thus  to  dispense  with  all  such  dualism  as  that  in- 
volved in  the  theory  of  representative  ideas,  is  inconsistent 
with  the  belief  in  other  minds  having  private  and  purely 
introspectible  content— and  is,  indeed,  inconsistent  with  the 
realism  professed  by  most  of  those  who  have  recently  assailed 
that  theory.  For  these  reasons,  and  for  others  not  here  indi- 
cated, I  can  not  think  the  hypothesis  of  ideas— of  non-physi- 
cal and  non-objective  entities,  which  are,  in  some  instances, 
capable  of  affording  a  mediate  acquaintance  with  entities  not 
themselves— to  be  in  quite  so  forlorn  a  case  as  many  acute 
and  ingenious  philosophers  of  our  time  suppose. 


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